CHAPTER XXXIV.

THE DEATH OF MAGDALENE.

"Envy and calumny will destroy innocence and pleasure; the oppressed will be sacrificed to the oppressor; and, in proportion as tyranny makes kings distrustful, judicial murders will depopulate the state."—Telemachus, Book XX.

During these passages the young queen, Magdalene, had daily become worse, and the "catarrh, which descended into her stomach," as Madame de Montreuil says in one of her letters, had brought her to the verge of the grave.

The sorrow and alarm of James were great; and remorsefully he now remembered the warnings of Francis I., contrary to whose most urgent advice he had espoused her, instead of the blooming Mary of Lorraine. Foreign physicians were sent by their kings from distant courts and cities, even from Syria and the remote countries of the east, and daily they crowded the antechamber with their long beards and longer garments, their grave visages and solemn quackeries; but their presence had no other effect than to bring lower and lower the health of poor Magdalene, and to excite the wrath and jealousy of John of the Silvermills, who (as the king's apothecary, and deacon of the barber-chirurgeons of Edinburgh), by the presence of these strangers, felt his dignity encroached upon, and his reputation impugned.

The love of the amiable French girl for her gallant young husband was excessive; it strengthened as her strength decayed; and finding that matters of state separated them long and frequently, contrary to all advice, she left Balmerino, with its shady woods and mellow air, and, to be near her beloved James V., returned to the grey and solemn courts of Holyrood on the eighth day of June.

There, to the joy of her husband, she seemed to revive a little; and the preparations for her coronation (which was to be on a scale of magnificence hitherto unknown in Scotland) had been resumed with renewed vigour; but alas! on the tenth of July, three days after the arrest of Lady Jane Seton, she suddenly threw up her hands to heaven and expired, at a moment when, stooping over her couch, the king, her husband, was playfully caressing and conversing with her; and the great solemn bells of St. Giles's, and those of the abbey church, the Dominicans, the Cistercians, and other friaries, as slowly and sadly they tolled a knell, warning all good people to pray for the passing soul, announced that direful event which plunged the whole land in sorrow; for James V., "the king of the poor," was really a monarch who reigned in the hearts of a people who were then loyal and generous as they were brave.

She was solemnly interred by torchlight in the royal vault at Holyrood; and, in her strong prison, Jane Seton heard the deep hoarse boom of the minute guns, as they broke upon the still midnight sky from the towers of King David, St. Margaret, and the ramparts of that stately fortress which enclosed her.

So great was the grief of the nation, that this was the first occasion of a general mourning in Scotland; and in the accounts of the lord high treasurer there are still preserved numerous entries of the Scottish and Holland cloths, French blacks, white crosses upon sable velvets, and many other articles for the court, together with the expenses of Magdalene's magnificent obsequies, the dirges sung and solemn masses said on that melancholy event, which became the all-absorbing topic of the time.

The whole nation mourned with the king; and everywhere, at kirk or market, on highway or in burgh-town, black cloaks and sable feathers had replaced the gaudier colours and fashions of the age. A great funeral escutcheon hung in each of the eight cathedrals, and over the gates of all the royal palaces. Like those used in France and Germany, they were lozenge-formed, bearing the royal arms of Scotland on a black ground, surrounded by those of the sixteen families from whom the queen was descended. At the four corners were placed (as usual among us at the present day) mort-heads, and the black interstices were semée with powdered tears.

After the funeral, King James, with a small retinue, retired to the solitude of his beautiful country palace at Falkland.

If the hidden cause of the queen's illness had puzzled the learned physicians and astrologers who had gathered around her couch, as it were, from the four winds of heaven, it occasioned greater speculation among the superstitious people of Scotland, and a universal whisper of sorcery, followed by a cry for vengeance on the cause of an effect so dire, went throughout the land, from the Caledonian to the German Sea.

Fettered to a sick bed, suffering under the extremes of mental and bodily agony—the double wounds, received first from Roland Vipont, and secondly from the earl, all combined, and acting upon a frame weakened by a previous illness, had brought Sir Adam Otterburn to the brink of the grave.

His hours of delirium were full of visions either of love and delight—of Jane Seton and a successful suit, or of sanguinary horror—of conflicts, tortures, and executions; while the hours of comparative calm that succeeded—the mere result of utter exhaustion—were occupied by deep-laid schemes of avenging himself upon the authors of so many miseries.

His mind had now but two thoughts—a delirium of love and a delirium of hate; and they corroded his heart between them.

He had cast off Jane Seton; for so he strove to think, and so, unto himself, he said a thousand times; he had rent her from his heart, and abandoned her to the terrors in store for her. Then love would come again, and he strove wildly to stifle it like a rising flame; for he had given the first impulse to the ball of fate, and he resolved to let it roll on its course to destruction.

In his moments of calm agony, when every voice in his heart was still but those which whispered of jealousy and revenge, he deliberately dictated, and drew up with bitter care, certain articles of accusation, implicating Jane Seton wholly and solely in the death of the queen, by sorcery of the most malignant character; and, armed by a warrant, the town mansion of the Ashkirk family, which had not been opened since the Albany herald, John Hamilton of Darnagaber, had placed his seal on every door and lockfast place thereof, was opened and searched by that unwilling functionary and the witch-finder, Nichol Birrel.

After the dose he had been compelled to swallow at Cairntable, the latter, it may be supposed, had reached Edinburgh with considerable difficulty; and, like his master, animated by personal and implacable vengeance against Sir Roland Vipont, he entered with heart and soul into the public prosecution. Thus, when by order of his lord and patron, Redhall, he was searching the house of the Setons, he contrived most opportunely to discover in the boudoir of Lady Jane a little wooden image bearing a crown, and marked with the initials M.B. It was stuck full of pins, and was partly scorched by fire; but after being duly sprinkled with holy water, and exorcised by the late queen's French confessor, was deposited in the hands of the lord advocate, who sealed it up in a box marked with the cross, as being the most tremendous and damning proof of guilt that had ever come under the notice of the newly-constituted College of Justice.

With one voice the whole city now accused, and without a moment's hesitation condemned, Jane Seton. The preparations for her trial went on rapidly; and the king, who was absorbed in his own grief, and remained secluded among the woods of Falkland, abandoned her to her fate; but the wretched Redhall suffered more than either the hapless Jane or the bereaved king, for remorse grew side by side with his anger.

Those sentiments of generosity, of pity, and of lingering love, which ever and anon dawned in the arid desert of his heart, and impelled him to free her, to sue for pardon, or to fly his country, were invariably stifled under a torrent of jealousy and hate when he thought of Roland Vipont; and then his half-healed wounds would sting him anew, as if probed by poniards; the perspiration would burst from his temples, and he writhed on his sick bed in an agony indescribable.

"She is indeed a sorceress!" he would exclaim; upon which his nurse and housekeeper, an old and wrinkled dame who attended him, and who never left his bedside, would make signs of the cross, and feel for the reliques which were sewed in the lining of her long piked stays, which, with her ruff and coif, made her resemble those quaint figures which still live in the pictures of Holbein.

Credulity has existed in every age of the world; and thus chiromancy, astrology, physiognomy, and the wildest theories of abstruse science, have risen and flourished on the ignorance and folly of the human mind; but there were none that equalled the witch-mania, which, strange to say, grew in Scotland, and flourished side by side with religious freedom and reform.

It is a curious fact, that before the epoch of Knox sorcery was almost unknown among us. In our earliest record of criminal trials, that comprehending the years 1493-1504, there is not one prosecution for sorcery. In the days of James V. it began to be much spoken of, and rapidly became a source of terror. Lady Jane's was nearly the first indictment; but the earliest statute against it was passed in 1563, by the first reformed parliament, and that portion of the law which refers to consultations "with sorcerers and witches" was not enacted until 1594—fully thirty years after the Reformation had been established by the law of Scotland.

Then, indeed, from that period, kirk sessions and presbyteries, ministers, elders, sheriffs, and justiciars, went with heart and hand into the matter; for in the witch-mania, that atrocious madness which spread over Europe, though Scotland was the last to catch the contagion, she was in no way behind neighbouring countries in the cruelty of her prosecutions.

According to Barrington, thirty thousand witches were burned in England, five hundred perished in three months at Geneva, and a thousand at Como in one year. The number committed to the flames in Scotland is incalculable, but no less than six hundred witches were indicted during the sitting of one parliament at Edinburgh. Suspicion, abhorrence, accusation, trial, and death followed each other with appalling rapidity.

Thus we find in history, that the savage spirit of ignorance and credulity which impelled the great Cardinal Beaton to burn six men at the stake, on the charge of heresy, was out-Heroded by the still greater ignorance and credulity of his successors, who, for each of these six, sacrificed more than thousands for the imaginary crime of witchcraft.

CHAPTER XXXV.

THE COLLEGE OF JUSTICE.

"No! in an accursed spot—our magic tree,
Where devils from of yore their sabbath keep—
Has all this been contrived; there did she sell
Her soul to the eternal fiend, to be
With brief vain-glory honoured in this world.
Bid her stretch forth her arm, and ye will see
The puncture, by which hell hath marked its own."
                                                                SCHILLER'S Maid of Orleans

The summer solstice was passed.

Heavily and louringly the 15th of July dawned over Edinburgh; and one hour after the portes were unclosed, the Right Honourable Knight, Sir Simon Preston of Craigmillar, the new Lord Provost of the city and Admiral of the Forth, entered by the Kirk-of-field Wynd, sheathed in full armour, with a party of horse; when, conformably to the orders of his eminence the cardinal, John Muckleheid, senior bailie, joined him with three hundred archers—the same burgher-archers who had lined the streets exactly two months before, on the entrance of Queen Magdalene.

A tumult was expected; very few merchants or chapmen opened their booths on this morning; and those between the Bell-house and the Tron remained closed. Sir John Forrester's guards were doubled at the palace, the Mint, the castle-gate, and elsewhere; and after arming themselves with more than usual care, vast crowds of burghers poured towards the Exchequer Chambers, or 'Checquer Chalmers, as they then named them. The stacks of heather, broom, whins, and of other fuel, which were then permitted to encumber the street, either as being the property of householders, or for sale, bore each on their summit a load of urchins, whose yells and outcries served to increase the general clamour.

A flag was flying on the steeple of the Tolbooth, which had been built fifty years before, by John Mercer, master mason; and thirteen shops (formed at the same period), in the vaults below the edifice, remained closed and barricaded.

The respect his garb ensured him, and the liberal manner in which he said "Pax vobiscum" to all, enabled the anxious and excited Father St. Bernard, on leaving his dormitory in the house of the prebendaries, to force a passage through the dense crowd which occupied the High-street, around the Exchequer, the Tolbooth, and Council-house, spreading even down the steep churchyard of St. Giles.

The provost's kinsman, Sir Andrew Preston, of Quhite-hill and Gourtown, with a squadron of horsemen, overawed the crowd. Clad in a suit of rich armour, he rode up and down the thoroughfare with his long lance, ordering and threatening some, or courteously giving admittance to others. The priest procured a place within the large hall of the Exchequer, where, for some reason now unknown, the trial of his unhappy penitent was to take place. A strong guard of archers occupied the hall-door and the turnpike-stair below, permitting none to enter without the closest scrutiny, lest armed Setons or Douglases might penetrate into the heart of the place; for rumours of rescue were abroad in the city.

Roofed with beams of oak, painted and gilded, the hall was lighted by two rows of windows, lozenged and stained with brilliant coats of arms. Those on the east faced the dark buildings of a narrow close; those on the west overlooked the churchyard of St. Giles; thus, as the sun could not (until mid-day) penetrate its recesses, the light within the hall, at the early hour of eight, when the court began to assemble, was of the most subdued and sombre kind.

At the upper end were fifteen chairs, behind a bench, all covered with scarlet cloth, whereon sat Walter Mylne, abbot of Cambuskenneth, lord president of the recently instituted, and then eminently obnoxious court of judicature, with his fourteen lords—viz., the abbot of Kinloss, the rector of Ashkirk, the provosts of Dunglass and of the Holy Trinity; the deans of Brechin, Restalrig, and Dunbar, who sat on his right hand; while the remaining seven, who were laymen—the knights of Balwearie, Lundie, Easter-Wemyss, Oxengangs, and of the Highriggs, Sir Francis Bothwell, and Otterburn of Auldhame (a cousin of Redhall)—sat upon his left. These were the first fifteen senators of the College of Justice in Scotland; and, save the churchmen, few of them could sign their names. They were all men advanced in life; and, with their black caps and scarlet gowns, looked grimly over the half circular bench, which was raised on a dais several feet above the floor of the hall.

Headed by Lord David Hamilton (a son of the Earl of Arran), their chancellor, or, as we would now turn him, their foreman, the jury, which was principally composed of Hamiltons, occupied a recess on one side of the hall; while the ten advocates, in gowns of Paris black, with a number of sworn notaries, had the privilege of occupying the other. A tall wax candle, painted over with religious emblems, burned on the right hand of the president; and coldly its light fell upon his pinched and stern features and the gold crucifix which glittered upon his breast.

Before him, on one hand, was a table where the clerks of court sat, intrenched up to their ears in papers; on the other stood an uncouth machine, covered by a black cloth. There was something in its aspect that made the blood run cold; it was the rack, with other instruments of torture. They were then in full use by the new court, but were last applied in Edinburgh by order of William III., whom the Scottish people will ever remember as the assassin-king—the butcher of Glencoe.

Near this, in a large arm-chair, hidden from the view of all save the lords, sat Redhall, buried in thought.

Macers in black gowns, and archers in steel caps, were visible here and there; but everywhere behind the bar was a dense crowd, whose heads were overlooking each other in close rows, like piles of cannon-shot. The whole court sat in the form of a horseshoe; and every lord's mouth, and every juryman's too, bore some resemblance to the same figure; for gloom, anger, and severity were impressed upon them all.

The bar enclosed the ends of this great horseshoe; and there, between two arquebusiers of the king's guards, sat Lady Jane Seton.

Destitute of every ornament save an amber rosary, she was plainly attired in a deep-skirted and close-bodied dress of blue silk, with hanging sleeves, each of which, from the elbow, had three rows of broad lace; and beneath these, from elbow to wrist, her round white arms were bare. A simple angular cap, of that graceful fashion which we see in the old portraits of Anne Boleyn, covered her head. She was pale as death, and the plain braids of her dark, almost black-brown hair, made her seem paler still. She had become fearfully thin and hollow-cheeked, but the character of her beauty was rather increased than impaired by this attenuation.

There was an expression of intense sadness in her quiet and limpid eye, and of sorrow on her lip; but there were times when her eyes flashed and her lip quivered with surprise and contempt, or a cloud of horror would descend upon her brow at the various proceedings of this new court, and the bitter humiliation to which it subjected her. But now, nearly broken in spirit, crushed, and feeling that she was for ever degraded by the frightful accusation brought against her, in general she was careless of what was done, or said, or thought of her.

There was something antique in her beauty; but nothing could be softer, purer, or more delicate than its aspect.

In silence she heard the low muttered revilings and exclamations around her; when harassed by the stern questions of the hardhearted and the credulous, or confounded by their energy and ferocity, their determination and their sophistry, she became utterly silent, and sought to bend all her thoughts on inward prayer.

A maze was before her eyes, and amid the maze were fifteen scarlet spots, her fifteen judges; a confused murmur was in her ears, but amid that murmur she could hear the beating of her own heart. In its inner recesses there was but one thought—Roland; and her heart only shrunk when her chain rattled; for they had chained her.

She was a witch!.....

Many a familiar face was in the crowd, yet not one deigned to look on her with kindness or with friendship. The terrible accusation had frozen the hearts of all; thus she saw less perhaps of sorrow than of indignation in every face; while, generally, a silence the most profound reigned throughout the whole assembly.

In Scotland trials for sorcery were mere formalities; the same blind terror and insane credulity which brought forward the accusation and hurried on the decision, led at once to the frightful condemnation. When first indicted, Jane had some hope of mercy, and that her perfect innocence might avail her; for sorcery was then a new crime, and there were many who totally denied its existence; but the moment she entered the court, and looked on the faces of her judges, and saw that there were eight Hamiltons in the jury-box, she felt that her doom was written, and gave herself up for lost—as the majority of votes form the opinion of a Scottish jury.

The proceedings of the Supreme High Court of Justiciary in 1537, the year of its birth, were, in detail, widely different from what they are to-day; and such was its informality, that there was not one witness for the defence, the counsel for which based his arguments solely on the blameless life, the innocence, and conscious rectitude of the accused.

"I am innocent!" Jane would sometimes repeat to herself; "and they dare not punish me—God will not permit them!"

The clerk of the court now stood up to read the indictment, which was written on a strip of parchment:—

"Jane Seton, most falsely designated lady and of Ashkirk, thou art delated by the king's advocate for procuring the death of umquhile the queen's grace (whom the blessed Lord assoilzie!) by sorcery and incantations procured from hell; thou art accused of having a familiar spirit; of having renounced thy baptism, and having upon thee the mark by which Satan distinguishes all who have sold themselves unto his service."

"Of these crimes against the laws of God and of man, of nature and our holy Christian church, Jane Seton, art thou guilty, or art thou not guilty?" asked the abbot Mylne, sadly and solemnly.

Thrice the question had to be repeated before she was roused from her apathy to reply.

"Guiltless, father abbot—guiltless of such crimes—even as the blessed Mother of all compassion herself was guiltless," she replied, gently but energetically; "and this day I call upon her to hear the truth of my assertion; and the unhappy never seek her aid in vain."

A murmur floated above the crowd of spectators; and Jane's head sank on her breast.

Like a sharp poniard, her voice sank into the heart of Redhall. He now arose, and with a paper in his hand—a paper which he nervously folded and unfolded—prepared to speak. He looked like an animated corpse; his long flowing gown of black Parisian cloth, the sable hue of his beard and moustache, contrasted forcibly with his livid complexion. His eyes were hollow, and a ghastly agony was impressed on every lineament of his face; but attributing these appearances to his long and recent illness, the whole court, from the lord president down to Sanders Screw, the torturer, pitied his sufferings, and admired his worth and unflinching energy as an officer of state.

He dared not turn towards the prisoner, but spoke with averted eyes, which the court attributed to his gallantry and extreme delicacy of feeling. He endeavoured to condense the whole hatred of his heart against her; but love would come again, and they wrestled fiercely for the mastery. His heart swelled within his breast, and his brain became wild. He had two existences, and two hearts—one which loved, and one which hated—one that longed to possess, and another that longed to destroy her.

Then it would seem that he loved her as of old, and was prompted to avow his passion and his guilt, and, asserting her innocence, poniard himself before the court; but again his mad and murderous longing for revenge would come back upon his heart like a devouring fever, and thus he loved and thus abhorred in the same moment. Strange, wild, and inconsistent, his was the love of the devil united to the frenzy of a destroyer; he felt that it was so, and there were times when he doubted his own sanity.

The die was cast now, and a thousand eyes were bent upon him, and a thousand ears were listening. He made a tremendous effort to master his fierce emotions and open the prosecution; and being aware that there were many among the judges who doubted, and even denied the existence of witchcraft, he bent all his dangerous eloquence to prove the first position.

"My lords," said he, with a voice that, from being soft and flute-like, had now become hoarse and hollow, though it sounded like a serpent's hiss to Jane. "My lords, there may be among us those who decline to admit that witchcraft existeth in the world; albeit, divines cannot doubt it, for have not the words of God admitted that such things may be? In the eighteenth chapter of Deuteronomy, we are told that diviners, enchanters, consulters with familiar spirits, witches, necromancers, 'are an abomination unto the Lord;' and further, the twentieth chapter of Leviticus saith, 'the soul that turneth after such as have familiar spirits, and after wizards, I will even set my face against that soul, and will cut him off from among the people;' while the Mosaic law emphatically ordained that no witch shall be suffered to live. We need not, most reverend and learned lords, look so far back for proofs that sorcerers and charmers existed, and do exist: it must be apparent to every reasonable being that what hath once been may be again, for nothing is impossible either to God or the devil; and the ancient chronicles of Scotland, and of every other kingdom, teem with proofs of sorcery. The heathens of the olden time visited witches with the most dreadful punishments; the Persians dashed out their brains with stones; while we know that the Assyrians, Chaldeans, the Indian Gymnosophists, and the Druids of Caledonia, were addicted to the deepest sorcery. By the laws of Charlemagne, a witch who ate human flesh escaped for two hundred sous, which shows (as in the present case) that sorcery was not confined to the lower class of society.

"The emperor Manuel Comnenus punished sorcerers with the utmost rigour; and the blessed St. Patrick procured fire from heaven to destroy nine of them. St. Colme saw a wizard milk a bull, as we are informed by St. Adamnan, for the saints are constantly watching Satan, the prince of hell and promoter of mischief; and if so, how much more ought we, who are their servants, to watch sorcerers and witches, who are the slaves of the devil!

"The witch of Endor feared to practise her sorceries before the king, because he had put to death all who had familiar spirits; and so great was the indignation of God against the sin of sorcery, that he cut off the ten tribes of Israel because they were wedded unto its abominations. John de Fordun records, that in the days of that good knight and gallant king, William the Lion, a wizard who perverted the vision of the people, was defeated by a holy man reading even a passage from the blessed Gospels.

"Among the Romans, Publius Marcius and Pituanus were executed for this crime; as also were Publicia and Lucinia, with threescore and ten other citizens, as Valerius Maximus informs us in the third chapter of the sixth book. Hence, to deny the existence of witches, is to deny the veracity of all history, ecclesiastical as well as secular; and thus sorcery, being the greatest of all human crimes, as it includes heresy, blasphemy, and treason against God, involves the most severe of all human punishments—death by fire—for fire is the emblem of purification.

"Picus of Mirandola, who lived in the last century, asserts in his writings, that 'magic is not founded on truth, since it depends upon powers that are enemies to truth;' and further, 'that there is no one power in heaven or earth but may be put in motion by the words of a magician;' and he proves that words are effectual in incantations, because God made use of words in arranging the universe."

"My lord advocate, to the point," said the president, dryly; "in many parts of his writings, Francisco Picus was a rank blasphemer."

"The prisoner at the bar is accused of procuring by sorcery, and the aid of magic images, the death of umquhile the queen's lamented grace, whom Heaven assoilzie! I accuse her of this, and boldly."

"To the proof," said the abbot of Cambuskenneth, as Redhall paused, and faltered.

"No difficult task, my lords," he resumed. "I need not expatiate on the hereditary hatred borne to the king, the queen and court, by the houses of Ashkirk and of Angus. Consanguinity is ever a strong proof of sorcery. The countess dowager of Ashkirk hath long sustained an evil reputation as a dabbler in magic. If the mother be a sorceress, we hold it in law, that the daughter must infallibly be so too. It is the inheritance of hell, and descends, as the children of married saints inherit a share of heaven. Arrian records that prophecy was hereditary, like disease, and why not sorcery?"

A murmur of assent replied.

"Hence, reared by her mother, the prisoner brought her damnable and abstruse studies to greater perfection; the pupil surpassed her teacher; and it was in her boudoir that this image, which is coated over with wax and stuck full of pins, was yesterday discovered by an officer of this high court—an officer whose veracity and worth none will dare to gainsay."

Here Master Birrel smoothed his shock pate; pulled up his ruff, which was stiffened with whalebone, and looked complacently around him.

"The good queen's gradual illness and wasting away from the hour of her landing, was the slow but matured work of sorcery; and such the most learned physicians and apothegars have declared it to be. My lords and gentlemen, here are written copies of the proofs," he added, as his clerks and scribes distributed to the bench and jury a number of written papers; but the said clerks or scribes might have saved themselves the trouble, as few of the learned lords, and not one of the intelligent jury, could either read or write. Neither had yet become fashionable or necessary accomplishments. "There you will find," continued the lord advocate, "that the queen's grace was first bewitched at the ball in Holyrood, where the Lady Seton induced others to dance a measure diabolique, which is well known to be in use among the witches of France; and as they danced, so the queen's illness increased with wondrous rapidity. That night her majesty kindly gave the prisoner her hand to kiss; then lo, again, the power of hell! the kiss burned into her heart, and she sank into a deadly faint. In both kiss and dance, my lords, we will prove there was sorcery, as the abbot of Kinloss assured me at the time. We all know how much Satan hath achieved by the agency of dancing, on looking back to the fits and visions of the Convulsionists, who in 1373 appeared at Aix-la-Chapelle. There is a certain mountain of the Harz chain in Almainie, where, on the 1st of May, every year, all the witches and wizards of the earth rendezvous to dance on Valpurgis night, as they name it. Now, La Volta, the hell-dance, was the ancient measure of the orgia, the feasts of Bacchus, a god of the pagans—a demon who loved wine. It came from Italy to Spain; from Spain to France; from France to Scotland.

"To the second proof. The prisoner with others visited the booth of Master Mossman, jeweller to the king's majesty; and there, placing on her head the queen's new crown (a notable piece of Douglas presumption), said certain words, to the effect that she would never live to wear it, for her days were numbered, and these ominous words we have here six witnesses to prove. Oh, my lords, did they not clearly and prophetically indicate a foreknowledge of the queen's death, obtained by the assistance of that familiar spirit who resided with her in the quality of page? Lastly, this image, half roasted and perforated by ninety-nine pins, and marked with a crown and the letters M.B., for Magdalene Bourbon. My lords and gentlemen, can other proof be wanting?"

Here he held up to view, between a pair of small iron tongs, a little wooden figure, about eight inches long, having on its head a crown.

"Mother of God!" muttered the people, crossing themselves with horror at these accumulated proofs.

"That death may be produced by wasting images, I could adduce a thousand instances; but less will suffice. In the year 980, our own King Duff, who pined under a grievous illness in Murrayshire, was rescued from death when the witch was burned and her images broken. The severe illness of Charles VI. of France was caused by sorcery, and the witch was burnt; so was another, who, in conjunction with the devil, forged a deed in favour of Robert of Artois. The powers of inflicting and of allaying diseases were peculiar to sorcerers; the mother allayed—the daughter inflicted. Solomon could allay disease by incantations, and Phyrrus, king of Epirus, did so by one touch of his great toe. Magic water may have been thrown on the queen's person; for we know that a few drops from Chosopis, the enchanted river of the Persians, brought death to all on whom they fell. As the fire scorched and wasted this image, even so did the poor queen waste and sink. Observe, my lords, it is formed of pine."

"The pine was consecrated, by the heathens of old, to Pluto, King of Demons," said Lord Auldhame.

"And wherever the unhappy queen endured the most severe pains,—in her head, in her heart, or the region of the stomach, there we find the greatest number of torturing pins. There are seven in each eye, and, like three, seven is a mystical number. I have but one remark more, my lords. This image was originally that of one of the three kings of Cologne; it has been abstracted from the rood screen of St. Giles's, and made to serve for that of her umquhile majesty Queen Magdalene."

"Sacrilege! sacrilege!" cried the crowd of listeners; "blasphemy and heresy!——"

"All of which assuredly require the most severe penalty your lordships can inflict—death at the stake!" and as the lord advocate sat down, pale and exhausted by his long harangue, and by the wild misanthropy of his desperate soul, the horror waxed strong in the hearts of his hearers.

"Holy Mary!" exclaimed the lord president, raising his hands and eyes to the oak ceiling, "can this woman, this being abandoned of God and of man, be a daughter of that gallant race, every chief of which has bled for Scotland and its king? Oh, what a wondrous—what a vast amount of sin is here!"

Master Robert Galbraith and Master Henry Spittal, the most able of the ten advocates, spoke in the defence of the accused long and ably, but all their arguments were overborne by the sophistry and eloquence of Redhall, and by the cloud of witnesses for the prosecution, which proceeded with such rapidity, that they were soon silenced, and sat down completely baffled. Then a long and anxious pause succeeded.

Father St. Bernard was in despair.

A senator now spoke; he was the rector of Ashkirk.

"My lords," said he, "in all that I have this day heard, there is much that perplexes me sorely; for it seemeth that the same faculties which were miracles when exercised by the saints, we style sorceries when assumed by others. St. Servan of Lochleven converted water into wine, and from the bosom of the arid earth a fountain sprang at the voice of St. Patrick. St. Baldred of the Bass used as a boat that rock which we may still see fixed in the sea near his island; the wooden altar of St. Bryde of Douglas sprouted and put forth leaves at her holy touch; the robe of St. Colme procured rain in Iona; and, in the winter time, St. Blaise could strike fire with his fingers——"

Here a stern glance from the Abbot Mylne cut him short, and he paused.

"The blessed saints of whom thou speakest, my lord, wrought those wonders by the aid of Heaven alone, and not by the agency of a black spirit. Of late, the devil hath frequently appeared at the preachings of the Reformers as a black cat, and why may he not appear elsewhere as a black boy?" said the president.

"True, most reverend and learned lord," rejoined the meagre little abbot of Kinloss, "need I remind your lordships how my predecessor, Abbot Ralph, now in company of the saints, when holding a chapter of the Cistercians at Kinloss, A.D. 1214, beheld the devil, yea, as surely as my name is Robin Reid, beheld him, in the shape of an Ethiopian, enter by a window; but, on being exorcised in good Latin, he vanished in smoke."*

* See John de Fordun's "Scotichronicon."

"True, true," continued Redhall, incoherently; "and by a devilishly devised compact with this familiar, she assigned her soul to Satan for the powers given——"

"Proof?" said the doubting rector of Ashkirk; "where is this contract?"

"In the archives of hell—therefore, how can we produce it?"

The judge sat down silenced, and a cold smile flitted over the face of Redhall, whose usually impassible front the Cumæan sybil herself could not have read; but he looked anxiously at the abbot of Cambuskenneth.

"Would that I knew what is passing in thy bald head, thou shaven dotard!" thought he.

"Familiar spirits are usually black," said the president; "the vile imposter, Mahomet, had one in the shape of a black cock, which, when it crew, set all the cocks in the world crowing; and the Lord Hugh of Zester had a black demon named Gudeshovel, who dug for him his goblin hall beneath the surface of the earth. The unhappy prisoner having persisted in denying her guilt, I require a slight application of the torture, and an examination for the devil's mark, that the ends of justice may be duly satisfied."

Redhall, who had been but half prepared for this, felt his heart die within him, and he made a convulsive start.

"The torture! the torture! Oh, rather let me die! Holy abbot—my lords—I ask you not for pardon, because I am innocent. I think not of vengeance, because I am a woman—and though an earl's daughter and an earl's sistar, a poor and helpless one—but I implore death, because ye have dishonoured me by these accusations and by these bonds—cruelly and falsely dishonoured me. Put me to death, but not to the torture; for oh, I am weak, very weak, and will tell you anything. Let me die! let me die! Oh, save me, Sir Adam Otterburn—oh yes, everything—thou who hast done it all, save me from these frightful men!"

As Birrel and Sanders Screw approached the shrinking girl, with their stolid visages and huge hands, though half suffocated by sobs, she gave a low, wild cry of agony and horror, and closing her eyes, became perfectly passive. The judges looked on unmoved; a thrill pervaded the hearts of the people, and Redhall felt the perspiration trickle over his brow, though his blood ran cold through his veins.

"Oh, Roland, Roland! my love! my love! I am dying now," said Jane, in a low voice (that was heard by Redhall alone), as she was lifted from her seat.

Redhall's momentary pity died; he sat down with one of his freezing smiles—such smiles as can only be given by one who has alike outlived the hopes of his heart and the feelings of humanity.

"The torture," repeated the lord president.

Redhall dipped his pen mechanically in the inkstand, and Dobbie uncovered the rack; then, as every man respired more freely, a low, but unintentional hiss seemed to pervade the hall.

CHAPTER XXXVI.

THE RACK—THE DEVIL'S MARK.

"If on the rack you strain our bursting sinews;
If from the bleeding trunk you lop our limbs;
Or with slow fires protract the hours of pain,
We must abide it all."—Boadicea.

As yet neither the boot nor thumb screws had been adopted by the Scottish courts; the ancient rack alone was the instrument of torture, and now it stood before the eyes of the startled people in all its naked and mysterious horror. Though totally repugnant to the fundamental laws of Scotland, which are based on those of Rome, the practice of obtaining confessions by torture in the Privy Council and High Court of Justiciary was not discontinued until a hundred and sixty years after the date of our history, in the reign of William III., who, whatever he was in South Britain, will ever be remembered in the north as one who was merciless as a Mohawk.

The rack, which Dobbie had uncovered, was a large frame of oak, raised three feet from the floor, like a long, narrow bed without spars, but having two rings at the head and two at the foot. The aspect of this engine, with all its accompanying blocks, pulleys, chains, and handspikes in the sockets of the windlass, froze Father St. Bernard with horror. He crossed himself, beat his breast, and closed his eyes.

Old and withered, with a long beard and a hollow-jawed sardonic visage, with leering eyes, a fangless mouth, and bandy legs, Sanders Screw, the torturer and headsman—the presiding genius over this infernal machine—looked like an overgrown imp, as, with his concurrents, he hurried agilely from ring to ring, and from rope to rope, putting the whole in working order.

"Agnus Dei!" muttered the old priest, who, in a little volume which he wrote, has transmitted an account of these things to us; "all this for one frail body! May Heaven make it without feeling, even as the hearts of those around us."

Powerless and unresisting, Jane was borne between Sanders Screw and Nichol Birrel towards the rack, and placed within its frame. Birrel remembered Roland Vipont and Douglasdale; and, trembling with joy and revenge, made himself more than usually active. The costume of Screw and his two concurrents had something strikingly horrible in it; their doublets were scarlet—the judicial colour in Scotland—but their brawny arms were bared to the elbow; and they wore dirty leather aprons, extending from their necks to their knees. Lady Jane's garments swept the floor, and her long hair, which became unbound as her triangular cap fell off, floated over the shoulder of Screw as he adjusted her in the frame. Then a shudder came over her as the rings and cords were secured to her ankles and wrists, her beautiful arms being extended at full length above her head, revealing the exquisite rounding of her bust and waist. The whole arrangement did not occupy a moment.

While in this frightful and humiliating position, with her head supported in the hands of Screw's apprentice, and her blue silk skirt drooping on the floor, Redhall dared not look towards her, but sat down beside the rack, and bent his bloodshot eyes upon the blank sheet of paper, whereon the coming confession was to be written. He trembled excessively. On the other side was the physician, who attended all such questioning—John of the Silvermills—clad in deep mourning, like all the courtiers and dependents of the king, with a white St Andrew's cross on his black velvet mantle, and having a large pouch at his girdle, wherein were various revivifying drugs and essences.

Gently, but unceremoniously, the greater part of Jane's attire had been loosened by the rapid application of a pair of scissors.

"Now then, the devil's mark," said the lord president, shading his eyes with his hand, and peering forward over his desk.

Nichol Birrel, sworn pricker of the High Court, now approached with his needle, and ruthlessly uncovered the whole neck, shoulders, and bosom of the unhappy girl. Her skin was dazzlingly white, and shone like polished ivory in the sunlight which streamed through the deep mullions of the windows above her in many hazy flakes.

"Oh!" she murmured, and shuddered, while the hot, bitter tears were seen to ooze from her closed eyelids. An icy sweat burst over Redhall, to behold that beautiful figure extended, almost nude, before so many unpitying and so many voluptuous eyes. His agony was frightful. He could have screamed aloud; and, to prevent himself doing so, buried his fingers in his breast beneath his robe. And there she lay, with a form that might have passed for Venus—one so delicate by nature and nurture, with her slender wrists and round white ankles enclosed by strong iron bands, and her uncovered bosom submitted to the eyes of so many men, and the rough paws of the ruffian Birrel.

There were a few generous hearts in the crowd who cried "shame!" and more than one gallant hand sought the hilt of a sword.

A pink spot, like a little rose-leaf, was discovered between her bosom and her waist, and to this the pricker, after making the sign of the cross and other preparations, applied his brod, or needle, which was three inches long, and, to the horror and astonishment of all, it sank up to the very handle in the mark, without Lady Seton wincing once, or seeming even aware that she was touched by the instrument.

Again and again the operation was repeated, and the pity of the generous few became blended with the fear and repugnance of the many.

"The mark of hell—the signet of Satan is always thus," said the Lord Kinloss; "for it is lost to all sensation, and deadened to the touch of every instrument—it is bloodless."

The long sharp needle of Birrel was pure and bright, as well it might be; for it was constructed like a theatrical poniard, to retire into the handle with the slightest pressure.

Blank dismay was impressed on every face.

Thrice Redhall asked her, in a hoarse and hollow voice, to confess, and thrice she gazed at him wildly, but made no reply; for the powers of life seemed already to have forsaken her. He then made a signal to Sanders Screw, and turned away his head.

Sanders, with his wrinkled and fibrous hands, grasped the handspikes of the windlass as a seaman would previous to starting an anchor. Then, with the whole weight and strength of his meagre body, the wretch suddenly depressed them, and every joint of the unhappy being cracked in its socket.

Father St. Bernard muffled his head in his cowl, to shut out the fearful sound.

She uttered a cry, the horror of which contrasted strangely with the sweetness and melody of her voice. Redhall felt as if he could have expired; and, in unison with her, he uttered a groan so painful and full of despair, that it must have startled all, had it not been blended with the cry of Jane.

"Mother of God! Mother of God! I will confess—I will confess! Oh, Roland, Roland!"

At these words Redhall bent his head towards the floor, for he felt that he had the face of a Nero, the eyes of a fiend, and he gave another of his horrible smiles. The name of Roland recalled his hatred, and that hatred triumphed over terror and compunction, as ferocity did over feebleness. The bars were a little relaxed, but she was not loosed until the following questions were answered:—

"Jane Seton," said Redhall, in a calm voice, and with an equally calm visage, for, being master of himself, his whole aspect was now as still as it the stormy passions which convulsed his heart were dead; "Jane Seton, dost thou confess to the damnable, the treasonable, and blasphemous sin of compassing and procuring, by sorcery and idols, the death of umquhile the queen's grace, of good memorie?"

"Oh, have mercy upon me!" she murmured.

"Dost thou confess it?"

"Yes."

"Attend, clerks of court. Thou dost confess to having a familiar imp in the shape of a black page, who became the father of thy little devils?"

"Yes."

"Um—um—coitus cum diabolo," muttered a clerk of court, writing.

"How many?"

"I know not."

"Another proof of deep sorcery," said the lord president, "for the witches of Germany have been known to have twelve imps at a birth."

"And thou didst suckle these uncounted devils at the mark on thy bosom?"

"Yes, yes; oh, hast thou no pity?"

"Thou false heretic, apostate, liar, and renouncer of thy baptism, thou dost confess to having read English books, containing the dark and damnable heresies of——"

"This belongs to another court," said the abbot Mylne. "My Lord Advocate, we have no jurisdiction here in ecclesiastical matters. Surely, my lords, no further proofs are required?"

The capped or cowled heads of the fourteen lords shook or nodded an assent, and, at a word from Redhall Jane was unbound and replaced on her seat; where, with a pale, distorted face, and half insane aspect, she gazed about her, with terrified eyes, between the dishevelled masses of her hair. Her hands, weak, trembling, and almost dislocated, endeavoured to restore the disorder of her dress, but failed in their office.

The physician kindly parted her hair, and drew her disordered dress over her uncovered shoulders.

"Unhappy lady," he whispered, putting something between her lips, "take this comfit—it renders one almost invulnerable to pain; though it be not such as those to which the divine Artesius owed his eternal youth and health. But it is the essence of a wondrous herb; for whatever God planteth, hath its good or bad qualities."

Without hearing him, intent only on retracting her rack-extorted confession, she gathered her hair back from her pallid face with trembling hands, and arose, but only to sink powerlessly on her seat, for her limbs now refused to sustain her, as her tongue refused to speak; for though her bloodless lips were moving, they uttered no sound. Forced by the torture, a bright streak of pink was oozing from her nostrils.

Again she essayed to speak, but now the jury, without being charged, and without retiring—for such were not then the customs—by the voice of their chancellor, unanimously declared her guilty; and after a brief muttering and bending together of cowled heads, the abbot of Cambuskenneth proceeded at once to pass the sentence.

Taking off his black monastic cap, he raised his eyes, and was heard muttering something. "In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti, et benedictæ Nostræ Dominæ Sanctissimæ Mariæ. Thou false sorceress," he said, suddenly resuming his cap and raising his voice,—"thou heretic, blasphemer of thy God, and renouncer of thy baptism, for the crimes committed and this day doubly proved against thee by witnesses and from confession, I adjudge thee to be taken to the Castlehill of Edinburgh at twelve o'clock on the night of the feast of St. Margaret the martyr, five days from hence, and there to be burned at a stake, until thou art consumed to ashes, which shall be scattered to the four winds of Heaven, AND THIS I PRONOUNCE FOR DOOM!"

The priestly president ended his sentence by extinguishing the candle which stood at his right hand—an emblem of death, or that hope was gone for ever. Thereupon, Dobbie the Doomster, clad in sackcloth braided with white cord, and having a white cross and skull sewn on his back and breast, approached, and laid a hand upon her shoulder, signifying that she was now his peculiar charge.

Those lords who were priests waved a benediction to the people, so much did they (by mere force of habit) mingle religious with civil ceremony; then the whole bench arose, and the macer shouldered his mace; but at that moment the clash of swords was heard, and a violent uproar arose at the door of the Exchequer Hall.

CHAPTER XXXVII.

THE GAGE OF BATTLE.

"In an evil hour I left her,
    Left her! more I need not say;
Since in my absence came another
    Lover, all my peace to slay.
I a captive, he a freeman,
    Ah! our fates how different;
Since your arm hath made me captive,
    See how justly I lament."
                                            CALDERSON'S Constant Prince

Above the clang of steel and the trampling of feet, a voice was heard that thrilled Jane to the heart; and though feeble, aided by the iron railing of the bar, she suddenly arose, with her hands outstretched and her beautiful eyes bent towards the doorway, where the pike-points were glittering above the heads of the crowd. Love and despair gave to her aspect a courage and sublimity which vividly impressed the hearts of all. Between the thick stone mullions and grotesque tracery of a tall gothic window, and through the painted glass, the forenoon sun shone bright and joyously, lighting up her features with a radiance and beauty, the more remarkable by the fantastic prisms of the oriel, and she stood like a beautiful Pythoness.

As she turned away, Redhall ventured to gaze upon her, which he had not yet dared to do; for he felt that he trembled whenever her glance fell on him. She was but the spectre of what she was, and it was he that had made that havoc! A beautiful though hectic colour had momentarily replaced her frightful pallor, but he knew the emotion that caused it. The old whirlwind of passion arose in his heart, and he sank into a chair.

The clank of armour, the noise and swaying to and fro of the crowd continued.

"A rescue!" said the president, and all his brother senators drew towards him, and grew pale.

"Nay, think not of it, my lord," said one, the Knight of Auldhame, loosening his sword in its sheath; "for those lances of Sir Andrew Preston are more than guard enough."

At that moment Roland Vipont, master of the king's ordnance, broke through the mass of people, and approached the bench, with his armour rattling and his spurs clanking as he walked. He was cap-à-pié, with his visor up, and his plume was covered by the dust of a long summer march. With his sword drawn in one hand, and his gauntlet in the other, he appeared before the startled tribunal.

Ghastly and pale with fury and fatigue, he looked grimly at the bench beneath the steel bars of his aventayle; and with an air which he alone, above all the Scottish noblesse possessed, confronted them like one valiant Trojan in a Grecian camp.

"Father Abbot, my Lord President, justice—I sue for justice!" said he.

"And how darest thou come hither in armour to seek it?" demanded the president, with kindling eyes.

"Armour is my garb, because I am a knight and the king's soldier; besides, I dare do whatever becometh a Scottish man," replied Vipont; "and I this day stand before you to demand justice at the sword's point!"

"It has already been given!"

"Priest and judge though them art, I tell thee them liest! And here I lay down the gage of battle in accordance with the laws of Scotland, of justice, and of chivalry, binding myself to maintain with the edge of this good sword, and by the aid of the blessed God, on foot or on horseback, in the lists of Edinburgh, or at the Gallowlee of Leith, that Lady Jane Seton is pure and innocent of the crimes alleged against her—pure as when Heaven created her, and that all men who uphold the contrary lie—foully lie! Here lies my glove!" and he hurled the steel gauntlet on the table with a clash which made the clerks of the court start from their seats with dismay; for, like all limbs of the law, they had a mortal aversion to cold iron in every shape.

There was a momentary pause; and Redhall, who gazed with gloating eyes upon the lover's agony, felt half-inclined to take up the gage, for notwithstanding his unruly passions and studied vengeance, he was both brave and rash; but the stern voice of the president arrested him, saying—

"Sir Roland Vipont, this claim for the ordeal of battle comes too late, and cannot be admitted. She has fully and amply confessed; besides, this man hath found the mark of hell upon her bosom!"

"Her bosom—this man—John Dargavel!" exclaimed Roland, startled on perceiving the person whom he had compelled to swallow his own poison.

"Nay—no John Dargavel, but a reputable officer of court," said the president, who felt some compassion for the agony expressed in the young man's face.

"A villain, who excited the lieges to rebellion in Douglasdale, and to a resistance of the royal standard, which occasioned me the killing and wounding of a dozen brave soldiers."

"We have had enough of this," said the president, impatiently; "the poor youth is so blind with passion, that he would not know a hawk from the heronshaw. Break up the court. Away, sir! torture hath been applied, and the ends of justice are satisfied."

"Torture—justice!" reiterated Roland, in a voice like a shriek, and looking with terror at Jane, who stretched her feeble arms imploringly towards him. "Lord, Lord, look down upon me, and preserve my senses. Oh, have ye dared—— Cowards and slaves! is it justice by rack and torture to wrench confession from the lips of a poor and helpless woman? Smooth-fronted villains, is there not one among ye who will dare to take up my gage? Sir William of Balwearie, Sir John of Lundie, Sir Adam Otterburn of Auldhame, do you hear me?"

Not one of the seven lay senators moved.

"Truly, thou art either a madman or a hero!" said the old president, gazing on the armed knight with admiration; "but doom hath been pronounced, and the sorceress must die!"

"Die!" repeated Roland, with a fierce smile. "And coldly thou sayest this? Oh, lord abbot! dastard judge! dost forget that thou growest old, and a day cometh when thou too shalt die, and be called to account for this misused authority. Art thou a god to create, that thou darest thus coolly to destroy; not like a gallant soldier in the heat of battle—but coldly, calmly, and without anger? But I see it all now; and though this moment be my last, I will avenge Jane Seton on Redhall—the angel on the demon! See how the pale coward is before the brave man! Art thou blanched, Sir Adam, with fear, with fasting, or remorse? Wretch and villain! who makest use of the laws to cloak thine own infamous projects of lust, ambition, and revenge; thus in face of thy deluded compeers, the just God gives thee over to me—at last—at last I have thee!"

And rushing upon the lord advocate with his long sword drawn back for a deadly thrust, he had infallibly run him through the body, had not two of the provost's guard resolutely interposed their halberts, the heads of which he hewed off by one blow.

"Oh, the fule!" said the host of the Cross and Gillstoup, who was among the crowd. "My thirty crowns! I may whistle on my thumb for them noo!"

A cry of mingled fear and admiration arose from the people; it drowned poor Jane's far wilder one of terror: and she made frantic efforts to free herself from the arquebusiers, and to succour or die with her brave lover, who, on being pinned against the wall with more than twenty long pikes, was soon beaten down, pinioned and disarmed.

As he fell, Jane thought they had killed him, and uttered a cry of despair; all her energies, so briefly recovered, immediately forsook her; the light left her eyes; her heart forgot to beat. She became perfectly insensible, and was re-conveyed to the Castle of Edinburgh in a litter, under the care of Father St. Bernard and John the physician.

"It matters not, this poor victory!" said Roland, with a bitter smile; "it matters not, Redhall. I will unmask thee yet, thou subtle villain, and show our too-credulous king the true aspect of the viper he has nourished so long."