CHAPTER XLIII.

DAVID'S TOWER—THE PRIEST.

"There's but one part to play; shame has done here,
But execution must close up the scene;
And for that cause these sprigs are worn by all,
Badges of marriage, now of funeral."
                                                        ROWLEY'S Noble Soldier, 1634.

As the physician retired, Father St. Bernard, Jane's confessor and daily visitor, and, of all the hundreds whom she knew, her only friend, glided softly in, and approached; for such was the terror excited by the accusations against her, that neither Marion Logan nor Alison Hume had dared to visit her; though they had sent many a message, saying, "how they wept and prayed for her," and so forth.

She raised her heavy head, and with an expression almost of joy, extended her hands towards him; but the ponderous fetters weighed them down.

The priest lifted the chain, and smiled sadly but kindly upon her.

"Pax Domine sit semper vobiscum," said he, making use of his invariable phrase.

"Good Father St. Bernard!" she exclaimed, "can this be the work of Heaven or of the fiend?"

"Of the fiend, daughter—canst thou doubt it?"

"I endure agony that is unutterable when thinking of Roland and of my mother. Oh, that she might hear nothing of all this! I have yet so much to suffer!——"

The old priest covered his face with the wide sleeve of his cassock, and wept, for he had still warm and acute feelings, though a long and ascetic life had somewhat blunted them and estranged him from the world.

"Can a merciful Heaven afflict me thus, father?"

"Hush, lady; whatever his miserable creatures may do, God is ever merciful and just. We know not but this visitation, terrible though it is, may be the means of averting some still greater calamity."

"Can any calamity be greater than death?"

"To the unrepentant? no. But pray, child, pray; for the Christian gathers hope from his prayers, while the poor heretic dies despairing and blaspheming."

"Good Father St. Bernard, if I could have been base—if I could have stooped, and been coward enough to abandon my poor Roland, and wed this frantic, this furious persecutor, all this misery might not have happened. It is a frightful alternative—a terrible reflection!"

"My good child, fear nothing and regret nothing. Think of St. Theckla, and of all she endured for shunning the love of one she detested; and now let the bright example of her whom St. Isidore of Pelusium styled the protomartyr of her sex, and the most glorious ornament of the apostolic age, be as a star and a beacon to thee. Shall I tell thee her story, as an old monk of Culross told it to me?"

Jane bowed her head, in token of assent.

"She was the pupil of St. Paul," said the prebendary, gathering energy as he spoke, "and, amid pagans, grew in holiness like a flower in the desert. Men called her beautiful, but she was good as she was beautiful, and gentle as she was good. A young noble of Lycaonia loved her; but the love of God, sayeth St. Gregory of Nyssa, burned too strongly in her bosom to admit of a human passion. She repelled his love, and, by the practice of every austerity, overcame all earthly affections, and subdued her passions in such wise that she became dead to the world, living upon it, but not in it—as a beautiful spirit, but one having no kindred feelings to those around her. The most endearing caresses, the most ardent protestations, the most brilliant flatteries and gorgeous presents failed to win her love to this young noble; and lo! from tender persuasions he betook himself to the most terrible threats; and thereupon, abandoning the stately house of her father, with its Grecian luxuries, its chambers of marble, with gilded ceilings and silken carpets, its Tyrian hangings, precious sculpture, and vessels of fine gold; abandoning home, friends, country, everything, she retired into the recesses of a forest to pray for Greece, and to commune with the God of the Christians amid silence and solitude; for such was the blessed example of the apostles.

"But there her lover, the young Lycaonian, discovered her; and, full of wrath and vengeance, accused her of certain heinous crimes before the magistrates of Isauria, who sentenced her to be torn limb from limb and devoured by wild beasts, in the public amphitheatre of the city. The day of doom arrived; and, naked in the vast arena, with no other covering than her innocence, and her long flowing hair that almost enveloped her, this tender being was exposed to twice ten thousand eyes. Undaunted in heart and high in soul, she stood calmly awaiting her fate from the fangs of those wild animals, whom goads of steel had urged to frantic madness, and whose deep, hoarse bellowing filled even the morbid multitude with dismay.

"The iron gates were withdrawn, and the mighty assemblage were awed and frozen into silence, when three enormous lions and three gigantic panthers, with manes erect and eyes of fire, bounded into the wide arena, where the helpless virgin stood in all her purity and resignation. With a simultaneous howl they rushed upon her; but lo! the mighty hand of Heaven was there! The lions forgot their ferocity, and the panthers the rage of their hunger; and gentle as lambs they crouched before St. Theckla, and grovelled in the dust to lick her snow-white feet.

"The vast multitude, their cruel magistrates, and the more cruel Lycaonian lord, were overcome at the sight of this wondrous miracle, and permitted her to depart in peace; and she died, at an extreme old age, in Seleucia, where, above her grave, may yet be seen the church of the first Christian emperors."

Jane listened attentively, and with the utmost good faith, to this legend. It was one of the many miraculous tales which then formed the staple subjects for the discourses of the old clergy on Sundays and festival days.

"I thank you for this bright example," said she, "but I am altogether unlike St. Theckla, for I am not above an earthly passion; and none know how dearly and how truly I love him to whom I am betrothed. Just Heaven! I have all that last frightful day yet vivid in my memory. The court, so calm, so orderly, so formal, so satisfied with themselves, and so full of morbid curiosity; the spectators' countless eyes; the judges, so serious and so solemn; their ten sworn advocates, so silent and so dreamy; and those cold-eyed clerks of court who gazed at me from time to time so stolidly, and with a self-satisfied air—at me, a poor helpless creature, abandoned to them, overwhelmed with desperation, and blind with fear and sorrow."

"Would that I could die for thee, Lady Jane. I am but a poor old prebendary; the years of my life are many, though the days of my joy have been few—few indeed. I would leave no one to weep for, and have none that would weep for me. I have long been sick of the world; I have nothing in it now to regret, and, save thyself, know none that would regret old Father St. Bernard, unless I add a few aged alms-people, my poor penitents. My time in it cannot be long now, and willingly would I give my life for thine, if such a thing might be. Oh, my child, thou so nobly born, so carefully nurtured, so innocent and so gentle, the most guileless and most docile of my penitents! Oh, this vile man, this Redhall, is a fiend! a monster!" exclaimed the priest, suddenly giving way to unwonted passion; "may the heaviest curses of God fall upon him! May he inherit the leprosy of Gehazi, and the despair of Judas! May the earth swallow him up, like Dathan and Abiram! May he sorrow like Cain, and may the wrath of God ever be upon him for the misery his unbridled passions, his blind vengeance and savage hate, hath caused unto thee!"

"Alas! good Father St. Bernard," said the gentle being, terrified by the old man's energy, "ought we not rather to pray for him?"

"Thou art right, my daughter, and thy resignation shames me!" replied the priest, whose indignation had, for the moment, borne away his better feelings. "Right, right—we are commanded to pray for those who persecute and despitefully use us. Thou good soul!" he added, signing the cross upon her brow, "may the angel of all purity watch over thee, for thou, in thy goodness of heart, art more like unto the angels than mortals."

"But, oh! that mode of death—by fire—by fire! It is so frightful!"

"The good should fear nothing. The hand which tempers the wind to the shorn lamb, may temper the flames to thee."

She covered her face in her hands, and began to weep. Her tears relieved her.

"And I must really die—so young! Oh, Roland, Roland."

"Child, thou thinkest more of him than of the will of Heaven. There is a sin in this."

"Heaven's will be done, father. I am not a heroine.'

"Its ways are inscrutable," replied the priest, looking upward.

"Hast thou not even once seen Roland, father?"

"Roland, again!"

"Pardon me, but I cannot help it. I fear his name will be the last on my lips—his image the last in my heart. Oh, forgive me this; but I cannot help it."

"They have accused him of treason."

"But there is hope of mercy for him, surely?"

"The proud are ever ungrateful; and say, who can count on the gratitude of kings? They may forget; but God never forgets."

"Another day has come and gone—a bright one it has been to all the world but poor Roland and me; the air so soft, so bright, so balmy; the leaves so green, the water so blue, the flowers so fresh and smiling. Can all my griefs be possible? Another day, and another—and where shall I be then?"

"This is the very selfishness of grief. Dost think thai thou and Roland Vipont are the only two unhappy persons in the world?"

The night was far advanced before Father St. Bernard left her; and before that time, his conversation had proved so soothing, that in less than an hour after he was gone, she committed her aching head to the pillow of the hard palliasse, which we have before described as being in a stone recess of the apartment, and sank into a deep, but quiet slumber.

CHAPTER XLIV.

DAVID'S TOWER—THE LOVER.

"I kist with ane sigh the ringlet fair,
That I shred frae my Marie's golden hair,
And I thought that I never would see her mair.
And when I try it to rest on my bed,
The visions of night surrounded my head.
But had I the wings of a dove to flee,
They had nae parted my Marie and me."
                                                            HENRY SCOUGALL, 1674.

In another chamber of that vast bastille-house, and at the north-west corner thereof, which overhung the hollow where the church of St. Cuthbert lay, and the marsh that bounded the western end of the loch, sat Roland Vipont.

The furniture and appurtenances of his apartment, without being very magnificent, were certainly better by many degrees than those afforded to his unhappy betrothed; but then it must be remembered that she was accused of sorcery, while he had merely committed high treason; and like hamesucken, or rising in arms, high treason was but a trivial action among the Scots of 1537.

He was not allowed to visit Jane Seton; the chamber to which the warrant of Redhall had consigned him was one of the strongest in the fortress; and Sir James Riddel was answerable for his body, dead or alive, when demanded, under a penalty of ten thousand merks.

Deprived of everything in the shape of weapons, even to his spurs, the lover sat with his arms folded on his breast, his chin (which exhibited an untrimmed beard) resting on his breast, his brows knit, and his eyes full of fire, revolving, as he had been for the last two days and a sleepless night, and re-revolving in anger and grief, a myriad of futile projects.

"Gloomy as death, and desolate as hell,"

his thoughts were too impetuous and incoherent to take any permanent or useful form; but when his eyes rested on the enormous iron grating which secured his window, or endeavoured to fathom the tremendous abyss that yawned below—that abyss where the loch was rolling, every hope died within him, and he became sick; while the recollection made him become frantic, that, though he remained inert, secured and shut up within a few feet of him there breathed, suffered, and wept one whom he loved to adoration.

All his recent adventures in Douglasdale—the storming of Fleming the farmer's barmkyn—the poisoning of Nicholas Birrel—the horrors of his return—the trial—his defiance of the court—his challenge, and its rejection, had all passed away from his memory, which retained but one episode, one vision—Jane, as she appeared before that cruel and determined tribunal—so pale, so ghastly, so helpless, and so beautiful.

The recollection was a frightful one.

"And the king, he who loved me so well," thought he; "has he too forgotten me? James Stuart—James Stuart! the Douglases have said truly, thou art ungrateful; and more truly and more wisely hath the good old countess said unto me a hundred times, 'Put not your trust in princes.' Who now thinks of the ancient wealth and valour of the Viponts?—who of their courage and patriotism? The honour of their name lies buried in the church of St. Colme, and beneath the moss that clusters on Aberdour—my patrimony gifted many a year ago to the grasping house of Morton. How unhappy am I! My whole life has been a struggle between poverty and pride, earning by wounds, and blood, and toil, hardly and severely, at sword's point, every penny that clinked in my pouch; for I have been a soldier of fortune, or misfortune rather, from my boyhood to the present hour. But have I not had some bright moments too? Ah, yes—yes! those I have passed with Jane—with my dear Jeanie; but they have been like the meteors that have shot over a dark winter sky; they are passed now, and a double gloom remains behind."

His apartment had two windows, one which opened to the west, and another to the north; and through both shone the last flush of the red sunset.

Now two voices beneath the west window, by attracting his attention, interrupted his sad thoughts, and he listened.

The speakers were in familiar conversation; but there was something so hateful in their tones, that his heart trembled with rage as he recognised them; and, impelled alike by hatred and a fearful curiosity, he drew near to listen.

In an angle of the ramparts, where the curtain wall joined a corner of the tower, the two gossips were seated on the stock of a large brass culverin: they were Nichol Birrel and Sanders Screw.

The yellow, livid visage, matted hair, and enormously thick beard of the former, and the shrivelled legs, nutcracker visage of the latter, were distinctly visible in the clear summer twilight; and there was a broad grin on the face of each as they conversed on a subject which, as it was pecuniary, interested them both in a high degree.

"Twenty merks and fifteen mak five-and-thirty merks," said Birrel, counting on his huge misshapen fingers.

"Ay," responded Screw, with another wide grin, as he held a piece of paper up to the light, which came from the west.

"The deil!" said Birrel, "ye dinna mean to pretend that ye can read, friend Sanders?"

"No, but I ken ilka item off by heart."

"Let me hear, then."

"First," said Sanders, pointing with a finger to the crumpled paper, which he ogled with the corners of his bleared eyes, as he indicated each item in succession, "first: 'Accompt of the haill expenses for ye burning of Lady Jane Seton, umquhile of Ashkirk, at ye staik, Saint Margaret's Day, fifteen hundred and thirty-seven——'"

"Weel?"

"Hoolie, man!" responded Sanders, scratching his head. "'Item; for one staick of aik tree, a penny.

"'Item; for twelve bundles o' faggots, saxpence.

"'Item; for three barrels o' tar and tallow, ten shillings.

"'Item; for greased flax and gunpowder, sax shillings.

"'Item; for an iron chain to bind her to the staik, twenty Flemish rydars.

"'Item; for a pair o' steel branks and one padlock, to Jhone, the lorimar, at ye Tron, aucht shillings of our Scots monie. Summa——'"

"Hech! ye'll hae gude profit off a' this; for I ken ye saved as mickle tar, flax, and faggots frae the burning and worrying o' fat Father Macgridius as will put ye owre this job, and mair."

"Never you heed that," replied Sanders, pawkily; "how mickle got ye for the brodding o' her?"

"Sax pund Scots."

"Sax pund! my certie, think o' that! Witch pricking is profitable wark."

"Had ye seen Friar Gourlay," said Dobbie, with a leer, as he came up and joined them, "by my faith! he burned brawly when the cardinal had him harled to the Calton and worrit for his foul heresies. We put a tarred frock on him, sewit owre wi' bags o' grease and powder, and piled the weel oiled faggots knee-deep about him. We then fastened up his body to the stake by three iron cask-hoops that held him erect as a lance, and the fire bleezed round him like a war beacon. His yell and skirls were awsome to hear; but the smoke and the heat soon chokit him; and then, when the breeze blew the fire aside, we saw him standing upright and stark in the middle o't. Then his belly fell out, and the flames shot up between his birselled ribs and out at his scouthered jaws, his eyen and ear-holes! By my soul! gossip Birrel and gossip Screw, it was an awsome sicht, and one to be haud in memorie!" Even Dobbie, connoisseur as he was in these matters, shuddered at the recollection of this extra-judicial atrocity.

"But come," said Birrel, "there is St. Cuthburt's bell striking ten, and we have muckle to do wi' this dame ere morning peeps."

The trio then knocked at the iron gate of David's Tower, to which they were admitted.

Roland had heard but a part of their frightful conversation; it was beyond the power of human endurance to listen to all those wretches said. He rushed into the farthest corner of his apartment, covered his ears with his hands, and wept and groaned aloud in the utter impotency of his rage and grief. But how much wilder would that rage and grief have been, had he known that they were all gone to visit his hapless mistress, for the double purpose of performing some of those additional tortures to which those accused of sorcery were usually subjected, by order of the supreme tribunal in Scotland, and at the same time to accomplish another cruel plan of Sir Adam Otterburn's device.

CHAPTER XLV.

THE BOON.

"Now is't a deed of mercy brings thee here,—
Of mercy to a suffering fellow man,
Or is't his rank that summons all thy pity,
And lends thy tongue its load of eloquence?"—Old Play.

On leaving King David's Tower, Father St. Bernard passed through the Spur, by the Castle Port, and descended the Castlehill-street into the city.

The bells tolled the hour of nine in the Maison Dieu, at the head of Bell's Wynd, as he passed it, and he saw the lights gleaming in the chapel of this edifice, which stood on the south side of the High-street.

The vast height of its buildings cast a dusky shade over this thoroughfare; and the steep narrow closes which diverged on each side from it were almost buried in obscurity. In each of the small round archways, which gave admittance to these deep and ghostly alleys, when the night advanced an oil lamp was lighted, a remarkable improvement at this early period, when neither London nor Paris could boast of such an advance in civilization, for which our citizens were solely indebted to their good King James V.

Finding that Edinburgh was becoming a place of resort from all parts of the kingdom, in 1532, the monarch so far influenced the town Council, that the High-street was well paved with large stones, quarried among the craigs of Salisbury. Many of the more ancient tenements were removed, renovated, or made more ornamental; while, as before stated, the citizens had to hang out lanterns to light the narrow thoroughfares; but as these were made of horn and were fed with oil, they shed but a dim and wavering radiance on the enormous stone bastilles and overhanging Flemish fronts, which are still the leading features of the old grey city of the Stuarts and Alexanders.

The watching was performed by the burghers. Every man within the barriers being on guard every fourth night; thus the whole citizens had to perform military service in rotation, armed as infantry soldiers of the period, with helmet, corslet and steel gloves, arquebuse and dagger, or with sword, pole-axe, and partizan. The citizens of Edinburgh enjoyed the distinction of wearing "quhite hatts," i.e., helmets of burnished steel; and the whole were arrayed under their baillies four times in the year at a general weapon-show. But to return.

The prebendary descended the Blackfriars Wynd, at the foot whereof projected the turret which still indicates the cardinal's dwelling. Grasped by the teeth of a grotesque stone monster, a lantern hung above the doorway, and lighted a large stone panel, whereon were carved and gilded the armorial bearings of Bethune of Balfour, overshadowed by the cardinal's tasselled hat. Here the poor priest paused for a moment, and muttered a fervent prayer for the success of his merciful errand, and then he tirled the pin, timidly at first, but boldly afterwards.

After a brief reconnaissance being made of his person through the vizzying hole, the door was opened by one of the cardinal's guards, who wore the arms of the archbishopric on the breast of his purple doublet.

"Is his eminence at home?"

"Yea, father," replied the pikeman, falling back a pace, with a profound salute.

"Please to announce that Father St. Bernard of St. Giles's craves the honour of speaking with him alone."

"Deliver this message to my young Lord Lindesay," said the pikeman to another of the guard, who had overheard the request; and in less than a minute that young noble, who was the betrothed of Beaton's daughter, and who acted as his page and equerry, appeared, bonnet in hand.

"His eminence desires me to say, that Father St. Bernard is welcome at all times," said he.

Ascending the narrow stone stair of this antique mansion, and preceded by young Lindesay, whose crimson velvet mantle and peach-coloured doublet were covered with glittering embroidery, the prebend, on passing through an opening in a gorgeous arras, found himself in presence of the primate of all Scotland, the legate of Paul III.

Brilliantly lighted by candles of perfumed wax, which burned in rose-coloured globes of Venetian glass, the chamber, in which we had the honour of introducing the reader to the foe of Henry VIII., and the terror of the Calvinists, to the eye of the poor priest, formed a striking contrast to his own humble dormitory at St. Giles's; but he was not a man to permit such thoughts to dwell an instant in his mind; and dismissing them at once, he knelt before the cardinal's chair, to kiss the white hand which that great and luxurious prince of the church extended graciously towards him.

He was seated in a large and easy chair of stuffed velvet; his feet were encased in slippers of morocco, red as his stockings, and rested on a gilded footstool. Two vases of Italian glass, exquisitely carved, and glittering with the golden-coloured and purple wine they contained, together with two silver baskets, one full of honied biscuits and the other of grapes, showed that his eminence had been solacing his solitary hour; for a gittern that lay on a chair announced that his daughter, the Lady Margaret, had just retired, and the young Lord Lindesay, having no occasion to remain, followed her; thus the priest found himself alone with the cardinal, before whom all his confidence vanished; for, despite his conscious rectitude of heart and goodness of intention, in presence of the second man in Scotland, the poor prebend became timid as a child.

"Welcome, Father St. Bernard!" said the cardinal, pointing to a seat near his own: "you look pale and fatigued. Here are red and white Italian wines, and these are better than our ordinary Rochelle or Bordeaux. To which shall I have the pleasure of assisting you? and then we will to business after; for I am certain thou hast come to me on business; no one," continued the studious cardinal, closing a book he had been reading, "no one, save my Lord Lindesay, comes near David Beaton for mere friendship, I find. Red wine or white?"

"Either, please your eminence—the flask that is next you."

Reassured by the frank manner of the cardinal, and by the luscious Greco that moistened his tongue, which had been parched and dry, St. Bernard was about to speak, when the cardinal again addressed him.

"Dost thou come with new tidings of this Calvinistic heresy, which spreadeth, even as foul leprosy, over Scotland; or," he added, re-opening his volume, which was The Franciscan, of George Buchanan, "or comest thou merely here, as this arch-heretic sayeth, to exhibit—

                    'The greasy shaven heart,
A gloomy friar, with flowing gown outspread!
The twisted girdle, and the hat's broad brim,
The opened shoe dressed out in monkish trim;
Below the garb, where we so oft will find
A brutal tyrant, whom no law can bind;
The robber, who oppression's armour wields,
The sensual glutton, to excess who yields,
To deck the husband's brow, the night will spend;
The faithless lover, and deceitful friend!
His modest face, though false, worn as a cloak,
To gull the plebeian, and delude the flock;
Ten hundred thousand crimes, wild, dark, and deep.
He hides beneath the clothing of the sheep!'

Holy mother of God!" exclaimed the cardinal (who had read this passage ironically and emphatically), as he flung the volume to the farthest end of the apartment, "and thou permittest this wretch to encumber the earth! Holy St. Francis of Assisium! thou whose life was a miracle of humility; who, in a glorious vision, beheld our Saviour hanging on his cross; and thou hast permitted the heretic dog, who writes thus of thy clergy, again to escape me!"

"I heard that he had broken forth from your eminence's archiepiscopal castle of St. Andrew's some months ago."

"True,—while my guards (the drunken rascals!) slept; but I should have made them answer for him body for body. Truly, the college of St. Barbe hath reason to be proud of its professor, this learned Buchanan, for there he is at present teaching grammar and the humanities; and now I hear that the Earl of Cassilis (whom I know to be an arch-heretic, traitor, and corresponder with Henry of England) is about to secure him from me in his castle of Culzean, as a tutor for his son, the Lord Gilbert Kennedy. By the cross, he is a rare tutor! But let this lord beware; for though he is brother of Quentin Kennedy, that good abbot of Crossraguell, whose pieties are those of a saint, the people of Scotland shall see whether a cardinal's hat or an earl's coronet will weigh the heavier in the scales of justice and of Heaven."

The cardinal was both exasperated and satirical. Father St. Bernard found that he had chosen an unfortunate time to prefer his request, and while he was rallying all his thoughts to introduce a more pleasing topic of conversation than that broached by the cardinal, the latter said, suddenly, but in a milder tone:

"And now, my good old friend, St. Bernard, what dost thou wish me to do for thee?"

"May it please your eminence to grant me your patience and pardon."

The cardinal put one leg over the other, laid his hand upon the wine-cup, and nodded, as much as to say—"Good: I see the reverend father has some request to make of me."

"My Lord Cardinal, dost thou remember the 30th of August, 1534?"

"The 30th of August, 1534!" repeated the cardinal, pondering.

"That 30th of August, when I implored your eminence not to pass through Fife to St. Andrew's."

"I do," said the cardinal, becoming suddenly animated, "for there were certain mysterious circumstances—but what of that now? 'tis three years ago."

"My lord, I know not whether that which I am about to reveal be a sin, or whether, by so doing, I am breaking the irrevocable seal of confession; the man who told what I am about to relate, made afterwards a public confession, when he was expiring in the streets of Kinghorn, but of all the crowd around him, I alone understood to what he referred—unhappy being!"

"Go on," said the cardinal, sipping his wine, "I am already all ears and impatience."

"On the evening of the 26th of August, just the day before Straitoun and Gourlay were burned for heresy at Greenside, I was seated in the public confessional at St. Giles's, when a man entered in great agony of mind, and knelt down before me. This man, my lord, was one whom the secret orations of the Reformers and the mal-influence of his chief, for he was a follower of old Sir John Melville of Raith, had partly led astray from the fold of the true faith. He was James Melville, the gudeman of Pitargie. The blessed hand of God was in it! Like a dark cloud, remorse had descended upon this lost one, and he informed me, that with sixteen others he had sworn to slay your eminence as you passed along the road to St. Andrew's on the morrow; and that this ambuscade of assassins was to be in waiting near the tower of Seafield, to the eastward of Kinghorn. In vain did I command him not to criminate others; but he told me, that your deadliest enemies, John Leslie of Parkhill, Peter Carmichael of Kilmadie, Sir James Kirkaldy of the Grange, the Melvilles of Raith and of Carnbee, the Lord Rothes, and the Laird of Kinfawns would be there. That Henry of England was in the plot, and had offered them magnificent bribes; and that one of his ships lay cruizing at the East Neuk, to secure for these seventeen conspirators a safe retreat to his own dominions, whither they were to bring your eminence's scarlet cope, drenched in blood, as a token that the deed was done, that their lust of vengeance had been sated, and that thou, like another Becket, had fallen beneath their swords.

"As the conscience-stricken assassin proceeded, I became frozen with horror. With groans and with tears he concluded his dark narrative, and beating his breast, implored me to make what use of his confession I pleased, but at all risks to save your eminence. To warn you was impossible, for the confessional sealed my lips! And I saw you—you, the greatest hope of our sinking church, and the chief pillar of the Scottish throne, its bulwark against English aggression, and Henry's grasping and heretical spirit, about to fall! Your eminence was to be shot by arquebuses, after leaving the ferryboat at Kinghorn. After long and deep thought, the penitent begged that I would use all my little influence to detain your eminence for two hours upon your journey, and you may, perhaps, remember——"

"Thy coming to me on the second day after the auto-da-fé at Greenside, and imploring me to delay by two hours my journey into Fife," said the cardinal, as he arose and took in his the hands of the priest. "Thou good and venerable man! I remember well thy diffidence, confusion, and timidity; thy fear of being ridiculed and thy dread of offending me; and how I railed and stormed at thy superstitious presentiment, as I now remember with regret I named it! Well?"

"At twelve o'clock, on the 30th of August, the knights and gentlemen I have named, with others, to the number of sixteen persons, all fleetly mounted and well armed with arquebuses and wheel-lock calivers, posted themselves among the copsewood that overhang certain thick hedge-rows, which lies between Kinghorn and Sir Henry Moultray's tower at Seafield. The king of England's ship, with all her sails set, was verging near the shore, while a Scottish flag, to mask her nation and purpose, was displayed from her mainmast head. The conspirators loaded their firearms with poisoned balls, and carefully blew their matches as the bells of St. Leonard's tower tolled twelve. It was the time at which these assassins, who were posted eight on each side of the way, expected your eminence.

"The twelfth stroke of the hour was scarcely given, when they perceived a man, attired exactly like your eminence, in a baretta, cope, and stockings of scarlet, come riding up the narrow horseway, between the dark green hedgerows——"

"What is it thou tellest me? My wraith!"

The priest smiled.

"The seeming cardinal came on, riding fast, as if in advance of his followers! when, lo! sixteen arquebuses and calivers flashed from the screens of thick hawthorn and dark green holly, and prone to the earth fell horse and man, wallowing in their blood."

"Agnus Dei!"

"With a shout, the assassins rushed forward to imbrue their hands yet further in blood, and found that they had slain—not David Beaton the cardinal, but one of themselves—Raith's own kinsman, James Melville, the gudeman of Pitargie! He was carried to Kinghorn, and there, as I have said, he died. Without informing me of his project, further than to delay you, he had thus been guilty of self-immolation, as having no other method of punishing his own crime and saving your eminence. And so you were saved. I delayed you at the pier of Leith for two hours, and at the very moment you embarked, the mock cardinal was shot on the shore of Fife. On returning, your eminence was pleased to remember kindly my warning and presentiment, as you still named it: then, my lord, you promised me, that if ever I wished a boon that was in your power, I should consider it as already granted."

"True—true, my good friend, my reverend brother, I remember it all."

"You spoke of many a deanery, and many a rectory that were vacant in Angus, Mearn, and Buchan; but I still find myself the poor prebend in the parish kirk of St. Giles——"

"Yes, yes—I feel that I have been ungrateful, and thou justly upbraidest me," said the cardinal, hastily opening a portfolio, "there is the Benedictine Priory of St. Mary, at Fyvie, the superior of which——"

"Nay, Lord Cardinal, nay! Our Lady forbid I should ever presume to upbraid thee. I am but too glad that among the maze of more important matters my service has been forgotten! and thus that I can still appear as a creditor, and request the fulfilment of your promise."

"Full of shame for having so long forgotten it, I swear to grant whatever you ask, that may lie in my power to bestow."

"Oh, my Lord Cardinal, I seek nothing for myself," said the poor priest, glancing (like Sterne's Franciscan) at the sleeve of his threadbare garment; "my wants are few, though my years are many, and I have neither desire nor ambition, but in the service of our Master who is in Heaven."

The old man paused, and the great prince of the church, surrounded by wealth and luxury, grasping all but regal power, and loaded by the rank and riches of his Scottish, his French, and Italian titles, felt how great was the gulf between himself and this humble but purer follower of the apostles.

"If in my power," said he, "thy boon is granted."

"I seek the pardon of my poor penitent," replied St. Bernard, clasping his hands: "I seek the pardon of Lady Jane Seton."

The cardinal started.

"Impossible!" he replied, "for the life of this woman is not in my hands."

"But it is in the hands of the king; and being so, is, I may say, also in thine, my lord. Thou alone canst save her, for, selfish in his grief, our good king has abandoned everything to his ministers."

"Forgiveness for her—a Seton—the daughter of a Douglas, and the grandchild of old Greysteel! Friar, thou ravest! the thing is not to be thought of; besides, from all my lord advocate has told me, she must have been deeply guilty."

"Oh, good my lord cardinal, dost thou, in the greatness of thy mind, conceive that such a crime as sorcery may be?"

"I do not—I believe too implicitly in the power of God to yield so much to that of his fallen angel; and I believe, that as Calvinism spreads in Scotland, so will this new terror of sorcery. I have not studied the trial, but shall do so to-night, and with care."

"A thousand grateful thanks."

"Immersed as I am among the affairs of this troublesome state (for its chancellorship costs me dear), and sworn as I am to extinguish by fire and sword the heresies of Calvin, which are spreading like a wildfire among our Scottish towns and glens, I can afford but little time for the consideration of minor matters, such as this trial. Thou art, indeed, an auld farrand buckie," added the cardinal, with a smile; "and well hast thou played thy cards; so rest assured, that if David Beaton can save thy penitent, with justice—she is saved."

Father St. Bernard's heart was too full to reply: he raised his mild eyes to the ceiling, and crossed his wrinkled hands upon his breast.

"On Sunday first, I am to say a solemn mass for Queen Magdalene in my cathedral church at St. Andrew's," resumed the cardinal. "Sorely I regret that poor girl's death; but dost thou know that the Scottish church had much to fear from her; for, reared and educated as she had been by her almost heretic aunt, the Queen of Navarre, she was inclined to view too leniently this clamour raised by the heretics for liberty of conscience, as they are pleased to term their abominable creed—a creed by which they make our blessed Gospels like the bagpipe, on which every man may play a tune of his own devising. On my way to St. Andrew's, I will visit the king at Falkland, and this time, rest assured, my reverend friend, my promise shall not be forgotten."

"Oh, my lord!" murmured the now happy old man; "your eminence overwhelms me."

"There is now little time to lose. Young Balquhan and twenty arquebusiers of the king's guard must accompany me, in addition to the pikemen of my own; and the moment the pardon or order of release (if I deem her worthy of it, and receive it) is expede, Leslie shall return with it on the spur to Sir James of Cranstoun-Riddel;" and, as a sign that the interview was over, the cardinal, with an air of elegance and grace, which he possessed above all the courtiers of his time, gave the priest his jewelled hand to kiss, and thankfully and reverently this good old man, who was enough to be his father, kneeled down and kissed it.

"A thousand blessings on your eminence! Dominus vobiscum," said the priest.

"Dominus vobiscum, et cum spiritu tuo," said the cardinal, and stretched out his hand to a silver bell, which he rang.

Hurrying out from an inner chamber, Lord Lindesay drew back the arras which covered the doorway.

Then, as the priest with a joyous heart was about to retire, he was appalled by the spectral figure of Redhall (who had the private entrée of the cardinal's apartments at all hours), standing close behind the thick, heavy tapestry.

He started hurriedly forward, and the friar saw but too well that he had not only been listening, but had overheard, perhaps, the whole of their conversation.

His aspect was fearful; remorse, terror, and despair had wrought their worst upon him. His jaws had become haggard and his visage pallid; but the priest thought that he read a gleam of hatred and rage in his eyes as he passed him.

"If he has been listening, and should undo all I have done!" thought St. Bernard, breathlessly, as he hurried down into the dark Wynd of the Blackfriars; "but his eminence has promised, and blessed be him, my poor little child is saved!"

Full of joy, and feeling as if a mountain had been removed from him, the good old prebend knelt down in the dark and deserted street, and baring his bald head, returned thanks to Heaven and his patron saint for having inclined the lord chancellor to hear favourably the prayer he had just preferred.

CHAPTER XLVI.

THIRST!

"'Twas thou, O love! whose dreaded shafts control,
The hind's rude heart, and tear the hero's soul;
Thou ruthless power, with bloodshed never cloyed,
'Twas thou thy lovely votary destroyed:
Thy thirst still burning for a deeper woe,
In vain for thee the tears of beauty flow."
                                                                The Lusiad of CAMOENS.

Aware that he had been seen by the friar in the act of listening, the lord advocate decided in a moment upon the course to pursue. He resolved that the promised pardon should never reach Edinburgh; but being too wary to make any reference to the conversation he had just heard, after simply giving the great cardinal a paper concerning an annual subsidy from the clergy, which was to be presented to James V. at Falkland on the morrow, he retired, and hastened to his own house in the Canongate, where, with the utmost impatience, he awaited the return of Nichol Birrel, whom, with Dobbie and Sanders Screw, he had sent on a devilishly contrived mission to the Castle of Edinburgh, whither we shall return to observe them.

From his window Roland had seen them enter David's Tower by the iron gate at the bottom of the stair, by which they ascended straight to the chamber where Jane Seton was confined.

After the priest had left her, the latter had become more calm, though St. Bernard had not held out to her the faintest hope of mercy or compassion from those powers which had abandoned her to die, or of rescue from that once terrible faction to which her family belonged—that faction now so scattered, crushed, and broken.

In her prison this sad and lonely being had watched the woods and water darkening far below her; had watched the stars as one by one they sparkled out upon the night; and she envied the airy freedom of the passing clouds as they rolled through the sky—the blue twilight sky of a still and beautiful summer gloaming. In masses of fleecy white on pale gold, as they were tinted by the rising moon, they sailed on the soft west wind in a thousand changing forms.

The very weariness of long grief overcame her, and she lay down on the humble pallet afforded her by the orders of the castellan, to sleep—for she had not slumbered during many nights, and on this night, like her thirst, her fatigue was excessive.

Her couch was a mere paillasse, with a pillow; for in everything she was made to feel painfully that she was the—condemned witch!

The bread given her during the two past days had been unusually salt and bitter; she endured great thirst; but the warder had removed the humble vessel that contained the water for her use, and now, without a drop to moisten her parched lips, she lay down to sleep. Her bread had been purposely salted to excess, and thus, having been many hours without a drop of water, her sufferings were greatly increased; and when she slept there arose before her visions of streams pouring in white foam, of verdant banks or moss-green rocks, of fountains that gushed and sparkled in marble basins, which most tantalizingly receded or vanished when joyfully she attempted to drink of them. At other times her kind old mother or Roland Vipont, with their well-remembered smiles of love, approached her with cups of water or of wine; but these dear forms faded away when the longed-for beverage touched her lips; and then she started and awoke to solace herself with her bitter tears—the only solace of which the cruel authorities could not deprive her.

She slept lightly, as a bird sleeps on its perch; but not so lightly as to hear her prison door opened by the Messrs. Birrel, Dobbie, and Screw, whose faces were made more villanous and sinister by the yellow rays of an oil-lamp, which darted upwards upon them. Birrel's visage, square and mastiff in aspect, livid in colour, and surrounded by a forest of sable hair above and below; Dobbie, with the eyes and moustaches of a cat; and Sanders Screw, though utterly destitute of any such appendages to his mouth, exhibiting in his nut-cracker jaws and bleared eyes a sardonic grin of cruelty and intoxication.

He carried a large Flemish jar, which, strange to say, was brimful of pure cold water.

Birrel raised his lamp, the lurid flame of which made yet more livid his yellow visage and ruffian eyes; and its sickly rays fell on the face of Jane; but the calm and divine smile that played upon her thin and parted lips, failed to scare from their purpose these demons, hardened as they were in every species of judicial cruelty.

Jane was dreaming of her lover, and in her self-embodied thoughts originated that beautiful smile.

Softly, but soundly, after all she had endured, this poor victim of superstition and revenge was sleeping now, and dreaming fondly and joyously—for in a dream every sensation is a thousand times more acute than it could be in reality—dreaming of that long life which was denied her, on this earth at least; she felt on her cheek the kiss of her young and gallant lover; she saw his waving plume and his doublet of cloth-of-gold; his voice was in her ear, and it murmured of his faith and love, that, like her own, would never die.

Her lips unclosed—an exclamation of rapture would have escaped her, when Birrel's iron fingers grasped her tender arm—and she awoke with a start and a cry of despair.

"Gude e'en to ye, cummer Jean," said he, insolently; "byde ye wauken, or fare ye waur; for gif ye sleep, see, madam the sorceress," and he shook before her eyes the steel brod, or needle, which was the badge of his hateful office.

Seated upon one side of her bed, Jane recoiled from these men, who regarded her with eyes that to her seemed as those of rattlesnakes, for they were pitiless in heart, and merciless as the waves of the sea.

We know not if we possess the power to describe the passages of that night in the vaulted chamber of David's Tower.

In the days of the witch-mania in Scotland it was the custom, at the desire of the lord president of the college of justice, of the lord advocate, of the sheriff, or baillie of baron, or regality, or whoever had tried and condemned a sorceress to subject her (even after trial) to a further ordeal; for no persecution, even unto the last hour, was deemed too severe for those unhappy beings who were accused of the imaginary crime of selling their souls to Satan, and thus irrevocably dooming themselves to a punishment that was everlasting.

Two of the most favourite modes of prolonged tortured were, to prevent the prisoner from sleeping by every device that the most infernal ingenuity could suggest, and to feed them on bread salted most liberally, to produce an intense thirst, to assuage which the least drop of water was denied them.

Under this treatment many became insane, for the kirk sessions carried it to the most ferocious excess in the seventeenth century.

On being awakened, and partially recovering from her terror, Jane's first sensation was an inordinate desire for water; her thirst was excessive. Her tongue was parched and painful, for her food during the two past days had been coarse dry wheaten bannocks, rendered bitter by the plentiful supply of salt used in their composition. She had been too much accustomed to the most cruel and unceremonious intrusions, to express her keen sense of the present one, otherwise than by her flashing eyes and dilated nostrils, for her heart swelled with indignation; but, on perceiving the jar in the hands of Sanders Screw, her first thought was to satisfy her thirst, and she implored them to give her a cup of water.

At this plaintive request, a grin spread over the weasel visage of Screw and the cat-like eyes of Dobbie, while Birrel, who was somewhat intoxicated, replied with his habitual tone of insolence—

"By my faith, cummer Jean, ye shall be thirstier and drouthier than even was I in Douglasdale, ere a drop rins ower your craig."

Screw set down the jar, placing himself between it and their victim. The lamp was also placed on the floor, and seating themselves around it, Dobbie produced from his wide trunk hose of buckram a pack of dirty and dog-eared cards. Each worthy official then placed beside him a flask of usquebaugh, the cards were dealt round, and the campaign of the night commenced with an old game at which the three might play, and Birrel could cheat to his heart's content, notwithstanding that Dobbie knew the backs as well as the front of his favourite pack of cards.

For a time Jane gazed at them with the same startled and dismayed expression that the sudden appearance of three reptiles might have excited; and again she begged a cup of water, for her thirst (which had been increasing the live-long day, and to which her salted food, the drugs of the physician, and the grief that preyed upon her, all alike conduced) had now attained a degree of torture and intensity which hitherto she could not have conceived.

Her entreaties were replied to with laughter; and it seemed as if the sight of the liberal draughts imbibed by the trio from their flasks increased the desire of the poor captive; but her prayers and tears were unheeded, and noisily the game went on.

Two hours passed thus!

The players had drained their flasks, and amid much cursing, quarrelling and vociferation, the loose change had rapidly passed from hand to hand, until the whole, amounting to somewhere about ten crowns, a few fleur-de-lis groats, and white pennies of James III., were lodged in the pouch of Birrel, who trimmed the lamp with his fingers, and offered a brass bodle to each of his companions that the game might begin anew; but, as the cards were being redealt, he perceived that, despite their brutal uproar, overcome by weariness and torture of mind and body, the unhappy girl had again fallen into an uneasy slumber.

Upon this the brodder arose with a growl, and drawing his needle from its sheath, gave her a severe puncture in the arm. The pain of this made her again, with a shriek, start up wildly from her sitting posture; and, uncovering her snow-white arm to the elbow, she found that blood was flowing from the deep incision.

With her imploring eyes full of horror, she turned towards Birrel and endeavoured to speak, but her tongue, which clove to the roof of her mouth, failed, at first, to articulate a syllable; and her lips were hard and dry.

"Did I not tell ye quhat ye micht expect gif ye dared to sleep," said Birrel, savagely.

She made a gasping effort to speak.

"Water!" she said, in a husky whisper, "water!—a single drop, for the love of God!"

"Oho!" grinned Screw, "the saut bannocks are now telling tales!"

He held the Flemish jar of polished pewter before her eyes and shook the limpid water till it sparkled in the light.

"The haill o' this is for you, dame Seton," said Birrel, "but there is a sma' bit ceremony to be gone through first."

"Water! water!" moaned Jane, in a whispering voice, feeling as if her throat was scorched, and her dry, parched tongue was swollen to twice its usual size. "Oh, man, man!" she added, clasping her hands, "I will pray for you—I will bless you in my last hour, with my whole heart, and with my whole soul, for one drop, a single drop of water!"

There never was a villain so bad as to be without one redeeming trait; thus, even Dobbie the doomster had his; and now the piteous tone of Jane's husky voice, her pallid face, her entreating and bloodshot eyes, had stirred some secret chord of human sympathy in the recesses of his usually iron heart. He poured a little water into a cup, and approached her. Jane's eyes flashed with thankfulness and joy; but Birrel dashed away the cup with one hand, and laid the other on his poniard.

Jane uttered a tremulous cry of despair.

"Then false coof and half-witted staumrel!" exclaimed the witchfinder; "is it thus ye obey the orders of Redhall, who is our master? Look ye, good mistress, subscribe this paper and we leave you wi' the water-stoup, to drink and to sleep till your heart is contented. But refuse, and woe be unto ye! For here sit we doon to watch by turns, to keep ye, waking and sleepless, with thirst unslackened, till the hour of doom, and so, my Lady Seton, ye have the option; sign and drink, or refuse and suffer."

With one hand he held before her the large and brimming jar; with the other he displayed a paper whereon something was written.

Within the deep jar the water seemed cold and pure, limpid and refreshing; while her thirst was agonizing, and her whole frame felt as if scorched by an internal fire. Her brain was whirling, a sickness was coming over her, and human endurance could withstand the temptation no longer.

For a moment she reflected that it was impossible for any avowal, verbal or written, to make her more utterly miserable or degraded than her sentence had already made her, and aware that nothing now could change the current of her fate save the royal pardon, of which she had not the shadow of a hope, she could only articulate—

"A pen, a pen!—the water!—the water! I am dying—dying of thirst!"

Promptly Birrel produced a pen, which he dipped in a portable inkstand.

She took it with a trembling hand and paused.

He temptingly poured some of the sparkling water on the floor. A gleam passed over her eyes, and in a moment she placed her name, Jane Seton, to the paper, vainly endeavouring, as she did so, to see what the lines written above her signature contained; but there was a mist before her eyes, and now they failed her. She threw away the pen with a shriek, and stretched out her hands towards the vessel of water.

"What would ye think, now, if I spilled it all on the flagstones?" said Birrel, with a grin, as he withheld the jar.

At this cruel threat she could only clasp her hands, and gaze at him in silence.

After enjoying her agony for a few moments, he handed her the jar, from which she drank greedily and thirstily.

"Hechhow!" said Birrel, with a triumphant growl, "now ye drink, cummer, as I drank of the Douglasburn, at the foot of the Cairntable," and, extinguishing their lamp, the three wretches retired, and she was left to her own terrible thoughts.

Again and again she drank of the water, but the thrill of delight its coolness and freshness afforded her soon passed away; and setting down the vessel carefully, she gazed at it, and then burst into a passion of tears.

The paper she had signed, what could it mean?

At that moment the clock of St. Cuthbert's church, which stood in the hollow far down below the Castle, on the west, struck slowly and solemnly the hour of four, and this sound, as it ascended to her ear, recalled her to other thoughts.

The morning was shining through the rusty grating of her window—the morning of another day. She thought bitterly of the paper she had signed; and deploring her lack of strength and resolution, buried her lace in her pillow, and gave way at last to a wild paroxysm of despair.