"Young man," said Lady Bruntisfield, "for a soldier, you seem good and gentle. Have you a mother" (her voice faltered) "who is dear to you—a sister whom you love?"
"Nor mother, nor sister, nor kindred have I, madam. Alas! Lady Grizel, I am alone in the world: the first, and perhaps it may be the last, of my race," he added bitterly. "But what would your ladyship with Walter Fenton?"
"Ha! are you one of the Fentons of that Ilk?"
"Nay, lady, I am only Walter Fenton of the Scottish Musqueteers, and nothing more: but in what can I serve you?"
"How shall I speak it?—That you will sleep on your post, and permit this poor child—dost comprehend me?—oh! I will nobly reward you; and the deed will be registered elsewhere."
"Oh, no!—no! beg no such boon for me," said the blushing and trembling girl; while the brow of the young man became clouded.
"You would counsel me to my ruin, Lady Bruntisfield: is it generous, is it noble, when I am but a poor soldier? Seek not to corrupt me by gold," he said hurriedly, on the old lady drawing a purse from her girdle; "for all I possess is my honour, the poor man's best inheritance. And yet, for the sake of Lilian Napier, I would dare much."
The deep blush which suffused the soft cheek and white brow of Lilian as the pikeman spoke, was not unobserved by the elder lady; and she said, with undisguised hauteur,—
"How is this, sir sentinel?—ye know my kinswoman, and by that glance it would seem that ye have met before. Lilian, do thou speak."
Lilian trembled, but was silent and confused.
"I have often had the honour of seeing Mistress Lilian at my Lord Dunbarton's," said the young man, hastening to her relief.
"How! are you little Fenton?"
"The Countess's page, madam."
"By my father's bones!" said Lady Grizel, striking the floor angrily with her cane; "I little thought a time would come when I would sue a boon in vain, either from a lord's loon or a lady's foot-page!"
These words seemed to sting the young soldier deeply; fire sparkled in his eyes. But tears suffused those of Lilian.
"Madam," said he firmly, "I am the first private gentleman of Dunbarton's Foot, and am so unused to such hauteur, that had the best man in broad Scotland uttered words like these, my sword had assuredly taken the measure of his body."
"I admire your spirit, sir," said Lady Grizel gently; "but it might be shewn in a more honourable cause than the persecution of helpless women-folk."
"Lady Grizel, a soldier from my childhood, I have been inured to hardship and trained to face every danger. My conscience is my own; my soul belongs to God: and my sword to the King and Parliament of Scotland, whose orders I must obey."
"Then, gentle sir, be generous as your bearing is noble, and, in the name of God, permit my little kinswoman to escape. Alas! you know well what is in store for us, if we are dragged before that odious Privy Council—fine, imprisonment, torture——"
"Or banishment to Virginia," said Lilian, bursting into tears.
"God wot I pity you, Lady Bruntisfield, and would lay down my life to serve you. Retire—I will keep my post; your chamber has windows by which——"
"Alas! they are grated, and there are sentinels without."
Fenton stamped his foot impatiently.
"Birds' eggs aye bring ill luck; and oh! Lilian, ye thoughtless bairn, when ye strung up the pyets yesternight, I forewarned ye that something would happen. The thumbscrews and extortions of the Council, yea, and banishment even in my auld age, I might bear, though the thocht of being laid far frae the graves of my ain kindred is hard to thole; but thee, my dear doo, Lilian—it is for thee my heart bleeds."
"Oh! madam, they cannot be such villains as to harm her—so young—so fair."
"You know not what I mean," replied Lady Grizel, pressing her hands upon her breast, and speaking in an incoherent and bitter manner. "Lord Clermistonlee rules at the Council-board, and he hath seen Lilian. Wretch—wretch, too well do I know 'tis for worse than the thumb-screws he would reserve her!"
She paused; and Fenton starting, said—
"Oh, whence were all my unreasonable scruples? Finland by his hints warned me of Clermistonlee, that roué and ruffian, whose name brings scandal on our peerage."
"Then let my dear aunt Grizel escape to some place of concealment, and, good Mr. Fenton, you shall have my prayers and gratitude for life."
It was the young girl who spoke; her accents were low and imploring; and her whole appearance was very fascinating, for her timidity and mortification added the utmost expression to her blue eyes, while her lips, half parted, shewed the whiteness of her teeth, and lent a sweetness and simplicity to her face. The tenor of her address made the heart of Walter flutter, for love was fast subduing his scrupulous sense of duty.
"Artless Lilian," said he with a faint smile, "Lord Clermistonlee aims neither at Lady Grizel's liberty or life. He is a villain of the deepest dye; and you have many things to fear. It ill beseems a lady of birth to sue a boon from a poor sworder such as I. Leave me to my fate, and the fury of the Council. I am, I hope, a gentleman, though an unfortunate one, and reduced to the necessity of trailing a pike under the noble Earl of Dunbarton; but in spirit I can be generous as a king, though my whole inheritance is to follow the drum."
"I offered you money——"
"Lady Grizel," said Fenton, colouring again, "I hope that the poorest musqueteer who follows the banner of Dunbarton would have rejected it with scorn. Though soldiers, we are not like those rapacious wolves the troopers of Lag, of Dalzel, or Kirke the Englishman. By my faith, madam, for six shillings Scots per day I have often perilled life and limb in a worse cause than yours; and why should I scruple now? Escape while there is yet time. Lady Grizel, permit me to lead you forth."
And, drawing off his leather glove, he offered his hand to the old dame, who, struck by the gallantry of his manner, said—
"You have quite the air of a cavalier, such as I mind o' in my young days, when the first Charles was crowned in Holyrood."
"I pretend not to be a cavalier," said Walter, with a sad smile: "the camp is the school of gallantry."
"Fear for my Lilian makes me miserably selfish. I would rather die, good youth, than that a hair of your head should be injured; but that this delicate bairn should be dragged before that fierce Council, like some rude cottar's wife—'tis enough to make the dead bones in the West-kirk aisle to clatter in their coffins! Ere we go, say what will be your inevitable punishment for this dereliction of duty?"
"A few days' close ward in the Abbey-guard, with pease bannocks and sour beer to regale on, and mounting guard at the Palace porch in back-breast and headpieces, partisan, sword and dagger; in full marching harness, for four-and-twenty consecutive hours—that is all, madam," said he gaily; though the inward forebodings of his heart and his sad experience told him otherwise. "In serving you, fair Lilian," he added gently, and half attempting, but not daring to touch her hand, "I shall be more than a thousand times recompensed for any penance I may perform. Believe me, it will weigh as a featherweight against what the Council may inflict on Lady Bruntisfield. Now, then, away in God's name! Ye will surely find a secure shelter somewhere among your numerous friends and tenantry; but seek not the city, for Dunbraiken's guards are on the alert at every gate; and, above all, oh! beware of—of Lord Clermistonlee, who (if Finland suspects truly) has a deep project to accomplish."
"Heaven bless thee, good young man!" faltered the venerable Lady Grizel, laying her small but wrinkled hands upon his shoulders, and gazing on him with eyes that beamed with heartfelt gratitude. "Alack! alack! my mind gangs back to the time when three hearts as brave and as gentle as yours, grew up from heartsome youth to stately manhood under this auld roof-tree; but, oh, waly! waly! the cauld blast o' war laid my three fair flowers in the dust."
A noise in the kitchen, and the loud voice of the halberdier calling fresh sentinels, now caused them to hurry away. To conceal about their persons such jewels and money as they could collect from the cabinets in the chamber of dais, to muffle up in their hoods and mantles, to give one glance of adieu to the portrait of the dark cavalier above the fire-place, and another of gratitude to Walter Fenton, were all the work of a minute,—and they were led forth to the avenue. Grey morning was breaking in the east, and the black ridge of Arthur's Seat stood in strong relief against the brightening sky; the wind had died away, and the waning moon shone cold and dim in the west, while, far to the northward, the dark opaque clouds were piled in shadowy masses above the bold and striking outline of the capital. There the great spire of the Gothic cathedral, the ramparts of its rockbuilt fortress, the crenelated towers of the Flodden-wall, and the streets within "piled deep and massy, close and high," were all glimmering in the first pale rays of the dawn, though the valleys below, and the woods around, were still sunk in the gloom and obscurity of night. A sentinel challenged from the dark shadow of the barbican wall, and his voice made the fugitives tremble with fear.
"Dunbarton," answered Walter, and on receiving the password, the soldier stept back. "And now, ladies, whence go ye?"
"As God shall direct—to some of our faithful tenant bodies, for safety and concealment," sobbed Lady Bruntisfield.
"Poor Mr. Fenton!" murmured Lilian; "I tremble more for you than for ourselves."
"A long farewell to our gude auld barony of Bruntisfield and the Wrytes—to main and holm, and wood and water," said Lady Grizel, mournfully; "we stand under the shadow of its green sauchs and oak woods for the last time. Once before I fled frae them, but that was in the year fifty, when our natural enemies, the English, won that doolfu' day at Dunbar, and again our hail plenishing will be ruined and harried, as in the days o' the ruffianly and ungracious Puritans."
"Not by us, Lady Bruntisfield," replied the young man, slightly piqued; "we are the soldiers of the gallant Dunbarton, the old Royals of Turenne, les Gardes Ecossais of a thousand battles and a thousand glorious memories, and your mansion will be sacred as if in the hands of so many apostles. Farewell, and God speed ye! Would that I could accompany your desolate steps to some place of safety! but that would discover all." They parted.
"I have done," muttered Walter, striking his breast; "and from this hour I am a lost man!"
Hastily returning, he resumed his post, with his heart beating high with the conflicting emotions of pleasure and apprehension. Youth and beauty in suffering, danger, or humiliation, form naturally an object of interest and compassion; but Walter, though pleased by the conviction that he had done a good action, and one so fully involving the gratitude of Lilian Napier and her haughty relative, felt a dread of what was to ensue, weighing heavily on his mind; for the Scottish privy council was then composed of men with whom the proudest noble dared not to trifle, and before whom the pride and power of the great Argyle, lord of a vast territory, and chief of the most powerful of the western clans, bent like a reed beneath the storm. Poor Walter reflected, that he was but a friendless and nameless volunteer, and too well he knew that the council would not be cheated of their prey without a terrible vengeance.
Scarcely had he resumed his post in the corridor, when the serjeant, whose brown visage was flushed with carousing, and whose corslet braces were unclasped to give space for the quantity of viands he had imbibed, reeled up with a relief of sentinels, all more or less in the same condition.
"All right, an't please you, Master Walter. I warrant you will be tired of this post of honour, and longing for a leg of a devilled capon, and a horn of the old butler's Rhenish."
"I thought you had forgotten me, Wemyss. You will have a care, sir," said Walter, addressing the soldier who relieved him, with a glance that was not to be misunderstood, "that you do not disturb the ladies by entering the chamber of dais; dost hear me, thou pumpkin-head?"
"Rot me, Master Fenton, I have clanked my bandoleers before the tent of Monsieur of France, and I need nae be learned now, how to keep guard on king or knave, baron or boor. Dost think that I, who am the son of an auld vassal of her ladyship's, would dragoon her out of marching money?"
"'Tis well," replied the pikeman, briefly, as he retired, not to the kitchen, but to a solitary apartment prepared for him by the orders of his old patron, the halberdier.
If thou sleep alone in Urrard,
Perchance in midnight gloom,
Thoul't hear behind the wainscot
Of that old and darken'd room
A fleshless hand that knocketh——"
HIGHLAND MINSTRELSY.
In a dark old wainscotted apartment, in the small arched chimney of which a coal fire was glowing cheerily, supper and wine were sullenly laid for Walter by a sleepy and half-frightened servant; but the first remained untouched and the last untasted, at least for a time. Removing his burgonet and gloves, he sat with his elbow on the table and his forehead on his hand, with his fingers writhed among his thick dark locks. He was again sunk in one of his gloomy reveries; but at times a smile of pleasure and animation unbent his haughty lip and lit up his handsome face like sunlight through a cloud; and it was evident he thought more of Lilian Napier's bright blue eyes, her innocence, and her fears, than the dangers and ignominy to which coming day would assuredly expose him.
The mildness, modesty, and beauty of the young girl, with the touching artlessness of her manner, had awakened a nearer and more vivid interest in his heart, one to which it had hitherto been utterly a stranger. It was the dawn of passion; never before, he thought, had one so winning or so attractive crossed his path; he had found at last the well-known face that his fancy had conjured up in a thousand happy reveries, and he was predisposed to love it. Her tears and affliction for the last relative (save one) whom fate and war had left, had increased her natural attractions, and a keen sense of her unmerited humiliation, and the risk he ran for her, by knitting their names together, all tended to raise a glow in young Walter's solitary heart; for having no living thing in this wide world to cling to, it was peculiarly susceptible and open to impressions of kindness and generosity; now it expanded with a flush of happiness and delight to which since thoughtless childhood it had been a stranger; and in a burst of soldierlike enthusiasm, he uttered her name aloud, and drained the pewter flagon of Rhenish to the bottom.
As he set it down, a noise behind made him turn sharply round and listen; nothing was visible but the dark stains of the wainscotting, and its gilded pannels glistening ruddily in the glow of the fire. From an antique brass sconce on the wall, the light of three great candles burned steadily on the old discoloured floor, the massively jointed arch of the fire-place, which bore a legend in Saxon characters, on three old pictures by Jamieson, of cavaliers in barrelled doublets, high ruffs, and peaked beards, and one of the famous Barbara Napier of Bruntisfield, who so narrowly escaped the stake for her sorceries, on a spectral suit of mail, and six old heavily carved chairs, ranged against the wall like grotesque gnomes with their arms akimbo; but although nothing was visible to create alarm, the aspect of the chamber was so gloomy, that certain tales of a spectre cavalier who haunted the old house, began to flit through Walter's mind, and he could not resist listening intensely; still not a sound was heard, but the wind rumbling in the hollow vent, and the creaking of the turret vanes overhead.
"Tush!" said he, and whether it was the faint echo of his own voice or a sound again behind the wainscot, he knew not, but he palpably heard something that made him bring the hilt of his long rapier more readily to hand. The portraits, like all those of persons whom one knows to have been long dead, when viewed by the dim candle-light had a staring, desolate, and ghastly expression, and they really seemed to "frown" over their high ruffs on the intruder, who would probably have frowned in return, had he not, even in the harsh lines of the old Scottish artist traced a family likeness to the soft features of Lilian Napier. But there was a stern, keen and malignant expression in the features of the old sorceress, Lady Barbara, that made Walter often avert his eyes, for her sharp features seemed to start from the pannel instinct with life and mockery.
As sleep weighed down the eyelids of Walter, strange fancies pressed thick and fast, though obscurely, on his mind; and though once or twice the same faint hollow sound made him start and take another survey of the apartment by the dim light of the sconce and dying embers of the fire, his head bowed down on the table, and at last he slumbered soundly.
Scarcely had he sunk into this state when there was a sharp click heard; a jarring sound succeeded, and on the opposite side of the room, about three feet from the ground, a pannel in the wainscotting was opened slowly and cautiously, and the bright glare of a large oil cruise streamed into the darkened apartment. Beyond the aperture, receded a gloomy alcove or secret passage, into the obscurity of which the steps of a narrow stair ascended, and therein appeared the figure of a man, who gazed cautiously upon the unconscious sleeper. He was about thirty years of age, strongly formed, and possessing a handsome but very weatherbeaten countenance. He wore a plain buff coat and steel gorget; his waist was encircled by a broad belt, which sustained a pair of long iron pistols of the Scottish fashion, and a sharp narrow-bladed rapier glittered in his hand.
Young Fenton still slept soundly.
The stranger regarded him with a stern and louring visage, on which the lurid light of the upraised cruise fell strongly. It betokened some fell and deadly intention, and as the hostile ferocity of its aspect increased as slowly, softly, and ominously he descended into the apartment.
"Through which part of the iron shell shall I strike this papistical interloper?" he muttered; "I will teach thee, wretch, to think of Lilian Napier in thy cups!"
His right hand was withdrawn preparatory to making one furious and deadly thrust, which assuredly would have ended this history (ere it is well begun) had not the subject thereof started up suddenly, exclaiming,—
"Back, rebel dog! on thy life, stand back!" and striking up the thrust rapier, drew his own, and throwing a chair between him and his adversary, he stood at once upon his guard.
"Malediction!" cried the stranger, furiously, "dolt that I was not to have pistolled thee from the pannel!"
"Wemyss, Wemyss!" exclaimed Walter, "The guard—what; ho! without there!"
"Spare your breath, for you may need it all," said the other, putting down his lamp, and barring the door. "This chamber is vaulted and boxed, and long enough mayest thou bawl ere thy fellow-beagles hear thee. Defend thyself, foul minion of the bloodiest tyrant that ever disgraced a throne. Strike! for by the Heaven that is above, ere a sword is sheathed, this floor must smoke with the blood of one or both of us! Come on, Mr. Springald, and remember that you have the honour to cross blades with the best swordsman in the six battalions of the Scottish Brigade."
"You are——"
"Ha, scoundrel! Quentin Napier of Bruntisfield, by God's grace and King William's, a captain of the Scots-Dutch; so fall on, for I am determined to slay thee, were it but to keep my hand in practice for better work."
The blades crossed and struck fire as they clashed; each cavalier remained a moment with his head drawn back, the right leg thrown forward and his eyes glaring on his antagonist. Walter was ten years younger than his adversary, upon whom he rushed with more ardour than address, and consequently, in endeavouring to pass his point and close, received a slight wound on the hand, which kindled him into a terrible fury. Napier excelled him in temper, if not in skill; he parried all his thrusts with admirable coolness, until, perceiving that the youth's impetuosity began to flag, he pressed him in turn, the ferocity that sparkled in his eyes and blanched his nether lip revealing the bitterness of his intention; but in making one furious lunge, he overthrust himself, and was struck down with his sword-hand under him. Rage had deprived Walter of all government over himself; in an instant his knee was on Napier's breast, and his sword shortened in his hand with the intention of running him through the heart, for his blood was now up, and all "the devil" was stirred within him. He felt the deep broad chest of his powerful adversary heaving beneath him with suppressed passion and fury.
"Captain Napier," said Walter, "for the sake of her whose name and blood you share—though you disgrace them—I will spare your life if you will beg it at my hands."
"Strike!" and he panted rather than breathed as he spoke; "Strike! life would be less than worthless if given as a boon by Dunbarton's beggarly brat. O, a thousand devils!—is it come to this with me?"
"Peace, fool!" exclaimed Walter, "peace, lest your words tempt me to destroy you. Accept life at my hands; they spared the blood of a better man upon the field of Sedgemoor."
"Be it so," replied the discomfitted captain, sullenly receiving his rapier; "I accept it only that I may, at some future time, avenge in blood the stain thou hast this night cast upon the best cavalier of the Scottish Brigade." He ground his teeth. "D—nation! my throat is burning—any wine here?" He drank some Rhenish from a flask, and then continued, "Ho, ho, and now, since you know my hiding-place, doubtless for the sake of the thousand marks this poor brain-pan is worth, ye will deliver me unto our Scottish Phillistines—those Lords of Council, who are steeped to the lips in infamy and blood!"
"Perish the thought!" replied Walter, sheathing his rapier with a jerk. "You are safe for me—and here is my thumb on't."
"Gad so, young fellow, I love thy spirit, and at another's expense could admire your skill in the noble science of defence. You fought at Sedgemoor—so did I."
"For the King?"
"Why—not exactly."
"For James of Monmouth?"
"Humph!"
"Then doubly are you a branded rebel."
"I had been a glorious patriot, had we won that bloody field. Young fellow, you must have early cocked your feather to the tuck of the drum! Art a Papist?"
"Nay, I am a good Protestant, I hope."
"And loyal to our Seventh James, the crowned Jesuit? Der tuyvel, as we say in Holland, 'tis a miracle!" and after drinking from the wine-flask, he resumed with greater urbanity, "When I remember how you permitted the Lady Bruntisfield and my kinswoman Lilian to escape, it shames me that I was not more generous; but the devil tempted me to blood in that infernal hole to which I must return."
"Now, sir, since the ladies are gone, you will undoubtedly starve."
"Nay, the whole household know of my concealment, and old Drouthy will not let me want for wine and vivres."
"They may inform."
"O never! I am their lady's only kinsman—the last of the good old line, and they are staunch servitors; a few among those, whom the courtly villany of these times hath left uncorrupted. 'Tis well I know all the outlets of the mansion, for it will become quite too hot for me after to-night. No doubt a band of your soldiers will be here at free quarters until the whole barony, outfield and infield, are as bare as my hand."
"In part, you anticipate rightly."
"Henckers! then I must shift my camp among our whig friends in the west until——"
"Until what?" asked Walter, suspiciously.
"Thou shalt learn anon, and so shall all thy faction with a vengeance!" replied the captain, while a deep smile spread over his features. "Meantime adieu, and may God keep us separate, friend! I trust to thine honour."
"Adieu!"
He sprang into the secret passage, closed the pannel, and Walter heard his footsteps dying away as he ascended into the hollow recesses of the thick wall, and sought some of those secret hiding-places with which this ancient mansion abounded more than any other edifice in or around Edinburgh.
Morning came, and with it came an order from the king's advocate to bring the prisoners before the privy council, and to secure the persons of their entire household for future examination and thumb-screwing, if necessary.
The multiplied lamentations and exclamations of fear and sorrow, which rang through the house of Bruntisfield on the arrival of Macer Maclutchy, with this terrible fiat (which he announced with all the jack-in-office insolence peculiar to himself), and the clank of musquets and din of high words in the corridor or ambulatory, roused Walter from a second short but sound sleep, and starting, he raised his head from the table on which he had reclined.
Redly and merrily the rays of the morning sun rising above the oak woods streamed through the grated window of the chamber, and threw a warm glow on its dark-brown wainscotting. It was a sunny March morning, and the old oaks were tossing their leafless branches on the balmy wind; the black corbies cawed on their summits, and the lesser birds twittered and chirped from spray to spray; the clear sky was flecked with fleecy clouds, and its pure azure was reflected in the still bosom of the long and beautiful loch, that stretched away between its wooded banks towards the east, where the old house of Gilford and the craigs of Salisbury closed the background.
Walter felt his bruises still smarting from the recent struggle; he examined the place of his fierce visitor's exit, but failed to discover the least trace of it; every pannel fitted close, and was immovable, for he knew not the secret. The whole combat appeared like a dream; but a scar on his hand, a notch or two on his sword, and several overturned chairs, still remained to attest the truth of it. Hastening to unfasten the door which Quentin Napier had secured with such deadly intentions, a little glove on the floor attracted his eye. He snatched it up. It was very small, and of richly worked lace, tied by a blue ribbon.
"She has worn this. Oh, 'tis quite a prize," said the young man as he kissed it, and laughing at himself for doing so, placed it within the top of his corslet.
"My certie, here is a braw bit o' wark and a bonnie!" exclaimed Macer Maclutchy, bustling into the room. "Here is an order from the king's advocat to bring the leddies o' Bruntisfield to the Laigh Council House instanter, and the chamber o' dais is empty, toom as a whistle,—the birds clean awa, and the gomeral that stood by the door kens nae mair about them than an unchristened wean. My word on't, lads," he continued flourishing his badge of office, "some here maun kiss the maiden or climb the gallows for last night's wark!"
After swearing an oath or two, which appeared to give him infinite relief in his perplexity,
"Master Walter," said the old halberdier, "here is a devilish piece of business—an overslagh, as we used to say in Flanders. Rot me! I have searched every place that would hold a mouse, but the prisoners are not to be found! I have pricked with my dagger every bed, board, and bunker, and so sure as the devil—make answer, Halbert Elshender," he cried, shaking the sentinel roughly by his bandoliers, "answer me, or I will truncheon thee in such wise, thou shalt never shoulder musket more. Fause knave! where are the prisoners over whom I posted ye?"
"A lang day's march on the road to hell, I hope—the old one, at least," responded the musqueteer, sullenly; "dost think I have them under my corslet?"
"Faith! General Dalyel will let ye ken, friend Hab, that a thrawn craig or six ounce bullets are the price Scottish of winking on duty. Ye'll be shot like a cock-patrick. I pity thee, Hab—d—mme if I don't; you've blawn your matches by my side on many a hot day's work, and bleezed away your bandoliers in the face o' English, Dutch, and German; but my heart granes for the punishment ye'll dree."
"You are all either donnart or drunk!" exclaimed the incensed soldier; "if the ladies were in the chamber when I first mounted guard, I swear by my father's soul, they are there yet for me. I neither slept nor stirred from the door; so they maun either have flown up the lum or whistled through the keyhole——"
"Didst ever hear of a noble lady playing cantrips o' witchcraft like a wife o' the Kailmercat, or that auld whaislin besom, your mother, down by St. Roque?"
"What for no?—it rins in the family, this same science o' witchcraft, gif a' tales be true."
"See if such a braw story will pass muster with Sir Thomas Dalyel. Cocknails! I think I see every hair o' his lang beard glistening and bristling with rage!"
"And he will mind that my father was a staunch vassal o' the Napiers!" added the poor musqueteer, in great consternation at the idea of confronting that ferocious commander. "What can I do or say?—O help me, Master Walter! Would to God I had been piked or shot at Sedgemoor!"
"Wemyss," said Walter, advancing at this juncture, just as the serjeant was unbuckling the soldier's collar of bandoliers. "The ladies are gone where I hope none, save friends, will find them. Elshender is innocent, for I freed them, and must bear the punishment for doing so; but next time, comarade Hab, you take over such a post, see that your wards are in it."
"I had your word, Mr. Fenton," replied the musqueteer in a voice between sorrow and joy; "your word at least in the sense, and we alway deemed you a gentleman of honour, though but a puir soldier-lad like mysel."
"True, true," replied Walter, colouring; "will not the generosity of my purpose excuse the deceit?"
"Why, Mr. Fenton, I wish weel to the auld house, for I was born and bred under its shadow, and mony o' my kin hae laid down their lives in its service, and I can excuse it——"
"D'ye think my Lord Chancellor will, though?" asked the Macer sharply, as he bustled forward, "or His Majesty's advocat for His Majesty's interest?"
"Or Sir Thomas Dalyel o' the Binns?" added the serjeant testily. "O! what is this o't noo—after I, from a skirling brat, had made a man and a soldier of thee? O! 'tis an unco scrape—a devilish coil of trouble, and I wish you weel out o't. Retain your sword, my puir child, but consider yourself under close ward until orders come anent ye. D—me! I once marched three hundred prisoners from Zutphen to French Flanders, among them the noble Count of Bronkhorst himsel, and never lost but one man whom I pistolled for calling me a hireling Scot, that sold my king for a groat, whilk I considered as a taunt appertaining to the Covenanters alone. Gowk and gomeral, boy, what devil tempted thee to——but why ask? Yon pawkie gipsey's blue een——"
"Hush!"
"Hae thrown a glamour owre ye. Wherever women bide, there will mischief be. 'Tis a kittle job! What a pumpkin-head I was not to keep watch and ward mysel. Rot me! a young quean's skirling, or a carlin's greeting would hae little effect on me, for I have heard muckle o' baith in my time. Did no thought of our Council prevent ye running your head in the cannon's mouth?"
"No; I saw women in distress, Wemyss, and acted as my heart dictated."
"Had they been two auld carlins with hairy chins, gobber teeth, wrinkled faces, and hands like corbies' claws, I doubt not your tender heart would have dictated otherwise. But when next I set a handsome young lad to watch a young lass, may the great de'il spit me, and mak my ain halbert his toasting fork!"
"Ay, ay," muttered Macer Maclutchy, whose jaws were busily devouring all the good things he could collect in buffet or almrie; "auld Hornie may do so in the end, whatever comes to pass."
"O Willie Wemyss, Willie Wemyss!" quoth the veteran halberdier apostrophizing himself; "dark dool be on the hour that brings this disgrace upon thee, after five and thirty years o' hard and faithful service, under La Tour d'Avergne, Crequy, Condé, and Dunbarton! The deil's in ye, Walter Fenton! You were aye a moody and melancholy cheild, and I ever thought ye were born under some ill star, as the spaewives say."
"Braw spark though he be," said the Macer, "he's come o' the true auld covenanting spawn, Mr. Wemyss—and birds o' a feather—here's luck, serjeant, and better times to us a'"; and so saying he buried his flushed visage in a vast flagon of foaming ale.
Whether I was brought into this world by the usual human helps and means, or was a special creation, might admit of some controversy, as I have never known the name of parent or of kindred.—THE IMPROVISITORE.
Many of the citizens of Edinburgh may remember the old Bank close, and the edifice about to be described. On the west side of that narrow street, which descended abruptly on the southern side of the city's central hill, stood in former days a house of massive construction and sombre aspect. Its walls were enormously thick and elaborately jointed; its passages narrow, dark, and devious; its stairs ascended and descended in secret corners, and one led to the paved bartizan, which formed the roof. Many of its gloomy chambers were vaulted. Over its small and heavy doorway appeared the date 1569, encrusted by smoke and worn with time. The whole aspect of the edifice was peculiarly dismal; the walls were black as if coated over with soot, the windows were thickly grated with rusted iron stanchells, and sunk in massive frames, the little panes were obscured by the dust and cobwebs of years.
It was the ancient prison of the city. In older days it had been built by a rich citizen named Gourlay, and had held within its walls the ambassadors of England and France. From its strength it had been converted into a Tolbooth, and was used as such until the time of the Solemn League and Covenant, when the spacious and more famous prison was adopted for that purpose; but the older, darker, more obscure, and more horrid place of confinement was still used at this time.
A party of the ancient City Guard, armed with swords and Lochaber axes, buff coats, and steel bonnets, occupied one of the lower apartments entering from the turnpike stair, at the foot of which stood a sentinel with his axe, before the door, which though small, was a solid mass of iron-studded oak, bolts and long bars.
In a small but desolate chamber of this striking old edifice—the same in which the hapless Earl of Argyle passed the night of the 29th June, 1685, his last in the land of the living—Walter Fenton was confined a prisoner, while the Reverend Mr. Ichabod Bummel, Mr. Drouthy the butler, and other servitors of Lady Bruntisfield, were in close durance in the greater or upper Tolbooth. The roof, the walls, and the floor of this squalid apartment were all of squared stones, stained with damp and scrawled over with hideous visages, pious sentences, and reckless obscenity. Its only window was thickly grated within and without, and there in the sickly light the busy spiders spun their webs from bar to bar in undisturbed industry. It opened to a narrow, dark, and steep Close of dreary aspect; the opposite houses were only one yard distant, and ten stories high; the alley was like a chasm or fissure; a single ray of sunlight streamed down it, and penetrating the cobwebs and dust of the prison window, radiated through its deep embrasure, and threw the iron gratings in strong shadow on the paved floor. Though the day was a chill one, in March, there was no fire under the small archway, where one should have been, and the only articles of furniture were a coarse and heavy table like a carpenter's bench, a miserable palliasse on a truckle bedstead, and a water flagon of Flemish pewter. One or two rusty chains hung from enormous blocks in the dirty walls, for the more secure confinement of prisoners who might be more than usually dangerous or refractory, and the whole tout ensemble of the chamber when viewed by the dim and fast-fading light of the evening was cheerless, desolate, and disgusting.
The day had passed away, and now, divested of his gay accoutrements, and clad in a plain unlaced frock of grey cloth, the young prisoner awaited impatiently, perhaps apprehensively, the hour that would bring him before that terrible council whose lawless will was nevertheless the law of the land. Sunk in moody reverie, he remained with his arms folded, and his head sunk forward on his breast.
The shadow of the grating on the floor grew less and less distinct, for as the light faded, his vaulted prison became darker, until all became blackness around him. Anon the pallid moon rose slowly into its place, and from the blue southern sky poured a cold but steady flood of silver light into the cheerless room, and again, for a time, the shadow of the massive grating was thrown on the discoloured floor. All around it was involved in obscurity, from amid which the damp spots on the walls seemed like great and hideous visages, mocking and staring at the captive.
Bitter were the thoughts, and sad the memories that thronged fast upon the mind of Walter Fenton; his dark eyes were lit, his lip compressed, but there were none to behold the changes; his handsome features were alternately clouded by chagrin, contracted by anger, and softened by love. Though ever proud in spirit, and fired by an inborn nobility of soul, never until now did he feel so keenly the dependence of his situation, or so fierce a longing for an opportunity when by one brilliant act of heroism and courage, he might place himself for ever above his fortune, or—die. And Lilian! O it was the thought of her alone that raised these vivid aspirations to their utmost pitch; but his heart sank, and even hope—the lover's last rallying point—faded away when he pictured the difference of their fortunes and positions in life. Scotland was then a country where pride of birth was carried to excess; and a remnant of that feeling still exists among us. He reflected that he was poor and nameless, compelled from infancy to eat the bread of dependence and mortification, and now in manhood, having no other estate than his sword and a ring, which, as he had often told Lilian with a smile (and he knew not how prophetically he spoke) "contained the secret of his life:" she the representative of a long line of illustrious barons, whose shields had shewn their blazons on the fields of Bannockburn, Sark, and Arkinholme, the inheritrix of their honours, their pride, and their possessions. Poor Walter! but he was too thoroughly in love to lose courage altogether.
As a boy, he had sighed for Lilian, and he felt his enthusiasm kindled by her gentleness and infantile beauty, for then his heart knew not the great gulf which a few years would open up between them. The ardour of his temperament made him now feel alternately despair and hope—but the latter feeling predominated, for though the clergy railed at wealth and all the good things of this life, and took peculiar care to enjoy a good share thereof—the world was not so intensely selfish then as it is now, for a high spirit and a bold heart, when united to a gallant bearing, a velvet cloak, a tall feather, and a long sword, were valued more than an ample purse by the young ladies of that age, who were quite used to find in their ponderous folio romances, how beautiful and disinterested queens and princesses bestowed their hands, hearts, and kingdoms on those valiant knights-errant and penniless cavaliers, who alone, or by the aid of a single faithful squire, freed them from enchanted castles, and slew the wicked enchanters, giants, gnomes, and fire-vomiting dragons who had persecuted them from childhood.
To resume: poor Walter was intensely sad, for deeply at that moment he experienced the desolate feeling, that he was utterly alone in this wide world, and that within all its ample space there existed not one being with whom he could claim kindred. He felt that it was all a blank, a void to him; but his thoughts went back to those days when the suppression of the rising at Bothwell, struck terror and despair into the hearts of the Presbyterians, and filled the dungeons of the Scottish castles, and the Tolbooths of the cities with the much-enduring adherents of the Covenant, beneath the banner of which his father was supposed to have died with his sword in his hand—so with her dying lips had his mother told him, and his heart swelled and his eye moistened, as he recalled the time, the place, and her tremulous accents, with a vivid distinctness that wrung his breast with the tenderest sorrow, even after the lapse of so many years.
During the summer of 1679 those citizens of Edinburgh, whose mansions commanded a view of the Grey friars kirkyard, beheld from their windows a daily scene of suffering such as had never before been seen in Scotland.
This ancient burial-place lies to the south of the long ridge occupied by the ancient city; it is spacious, irregular, and surrounded by magnificent tombs, many of them being of great antiquity, and marking the last resting-places of those who were eminent for their virtues and talents, or distinguished by their birth. It is a melancholy place withal. For three hundred years never a day has passed without many persons being interred there; and the hideous clay, the yellow and many-coloured loam, that had once lived and breathed, and loved and spoken, has now risen several feet above the adjacent street, against the walls of the great old church in the centre, and has buried the basements of the quaint and dark monuments that surround it. The inscriptions and grotesque carving of the latter, have long since been encrusted and blackened by the smoke of the city, or worn and obliterated by the corroding and fetid atmosphere of the great grave-yard. There is not a spot in all the Lothians where the broad-leaved docken, the rank dog-grass, the long black nettle, and other weeds grow so luxuriantly, for terrible is the mass of human corruption, for ever festering and decaying beneath the verdant turf.
In the year before mentioned, this ancient city of the dead was crowded to excess with those unhappy non-conformists whom the prisons could not contain, for already were their gloomy dungeons and squalid chambers filled with the poor, the miserable, and devoted Covenanters. Strong guards and chains of sentinels watched by day and night the walls of the burial-ground; and then the buff-coated dragoon, with his broadsword and carbine, and the smart musqueteer, with his dagger and matchlock, were ever on the alert to deal instant death as the penalty of any attempt to escape. The rising at Bothwell had been quenched in blood; and these unhappy people had been collected—principally from Bathgate—by the cavalry employed in riding down the country, and being driven like a herd of cattle to the capital, were penned up in the old churchyard. And there, for months, they lay in hundreds, exposed to the scorching glare of the sun by day, and the chill dew by night—the rain and the wind and the storm! God's creatures, formed in his own image, reduced to the level of the hare and the fox, with no other canopy than the changing sky, and no other bed than the rank grass, reeds, and nettles, that sprung in such hideous luxuriance from the fetid graves beneath them.
It was a sorrowful sight; for there was the strong and athletic peasant, with his true Scottish heart of stubborn pride and rectitude, his weak and tender wife with her little infants, his aged and infirm parents. Their miseries increasing as day by day their numbers diminished, and other burial-mounds, fresh and earthy, rose amid the hollow-eyed survivors to mark the last homes of other martyrs in the cause of "the oppressed Kirk and broken Covenant." And all this terrible amount of mental misery and bodily suffering was accumulated within the walls of the capital, amid the noisy and busy streets of a densely peopled city—and for what? Religion—religion, under whose wide mantle so many thousand atrocities have been committed by men of every creed and age; and because these poor peasants had resolved to worship God after the spirit of their own hearts, and the fashion of their fathers.
When the Duke of Albany and York (afterwards James VII.) came to Edinburgh, the persecution was not continued with such rigour; but the progress of time never overcame the resolution of the covenanters, though many noble families were reduced to poverty, exile, and ruin, while their brave and moral tenantry suffered famine, torture, imprisonment, and every severity that tyrannical misgovernment could inflict, until the Presbyterians were driven to the verge of despair; intrigues with the Prince of Orange were set on foot, and for some years a storm had been gathering, which, in the shape of a Dutch invasion, was soon to burst over the whole of Britain.
Walter's memory went back to those days, when, amid the tombs and graves of that old kirk-yard, he had nestled, a little and wailing child, on the bosom of his mother, who, imprisoned there among the "common herd," had soon sunk under the combined effects of exposure, starvation, degradation, and sorrow; and he remembered when coiled up within her mantle and plaid, how he hid his little face in her fair neck, trembling with cold and fear in dreary nights, when the moon streamed its light between the flying clouds upon the vast and desolate church and its thick grave-mounds, with the long reedy grass waving on their solemn and melancholy ridges.
A mystery hung over the fortune of Walter Fenton. Of his family he knew nothing further than that his mother's name was Fenton, and his own was Walter, for so she had been wont to call him. Of his father he knew nothing, save that he had never been seen since the cavalry of Claverhouse swept over the Bridge of Bothwell, scattering its defenders in death and defeat. He had heard that his father there held high command, but was supposed to have perished either in the furious mêlée on the bridge, or in the stream beneath it. Concealing her rank in the disguise of a peasant, his mother had been found in the vicinity of the battle-field, was arrested as a suspected person, sent to Edinburgh, and imprisoned with other unfortunates in the old church-yard.
Poor Walter used to remember with pleasure that they had always remained aloof from the other prisoners, and were treated by them with marked respect. Their usual shelter was under the great mausoleum of the Barons of Coates, the quaint devices and antique sculpture of which had often raised his childish fear and wonder; he recalled through the struggling and misty perceptions of infancy, how day by day her fair features became paler and more attenuated, her eye more sunken and ghastly, her voice more tremulous and weak, and her strength even less than his own; for (he had heard the soldiers say) she had been a tenderly nurtured and fragile creature, unable to endure the hardships to which she was subjected; and so she perished among the first that died there.
One morning the little boy raised his head from the coarse plaid which on the previous night her feeble hands had wrapped around him, and called as usual for her daily kiss; he twisted his dimpled fingers in the masses of her silky hair, and laid his smiling face to hers—it was cold as the marble tomb beside them; he shrank back, and again called upon her, but her still lips gave no reply; he stirred her—she did not move. Then, struck by the peculiar, the terrible aspect of her pale and once beautiful face, the ghastly eyes and relaxed jaw, the child screamed aloud on the mother that heard him no more. He dreaded alike to remain or to fly; for, alas! there was no other in whose arms he could find a refuge.
A soldier approached. He was a white-haired veteran, who had looked on many a battle-field, and speaking kindly to the desolate child, he gently stirred the dead woman with his halberd.
"Is this thy mother, my puir bairn?" said he.
The child answered only by his tears, and hid his face in the grass.
"Come away with me, my little mannikin," continued the soldier, "for thy mother hath gone to a better and bonnier place than this."
"Take me there too," sobbed the child, clinging to the soldier's hand; "oh, take me there too."
"By my faith, little one, 'tis a march I am not prepared for yet—but our parson will tell you all about it. Tush! I know the flams of the drum better than how to expound the text; so come away, my puir bairn; thy mother, God rest her, is in good hands, I warrant. Come away; and rot me, if thou shalt want while old Willie Wemyss of the Scots' Musqueteers, hath a bodle in his pouch, or a bannock in his havresack."
By the good-hearted soldier he was carried away in a paroxysm of childish grief and terror; and he saw his mother no more.
By the beauty of her person, the exceeding whiteness of her hands, and a very valuable ring found with her, she was supposed to be of higher rank than her peasant's attire indicated; and those apparent proofs of a superior birth, the soldiers never omitted an opportunity of impressing upon Walter as he grew older; and cited innumerable Low Country legends and old Scottish traditions, wherein certain heroes just so circumstanced, had become great personages in the end; and Walter was taught to consider that there was no reason why he should be an exception. But who his mother was, had unfortunately remained locked in her own breast; whether from excessive debility and broken spirit she lacked strength to communicate with the other captives, or whether she feared to do so, could not be known now; her secret was buried with her, and thus a mystery was thrown over the fortune of the little boy, which through life caused him to be somewhat of a moody and reflective nature.
William Wemyss, a veteran serjeant of Dunbarton's musqueteers, became his patron and protector; and a love and friendship sprang up between them, for the orphan had none other to cling to. Wemyss often led him to the old churchyard, and showed him the grave where his mother lay—where the soldiers had interred her; and there little Walter, overcome by the mystery that involved his fate, and the loneliness of his heart, wept bitterly; for the soldier, though meaning well, was rather like one of Job's comforters, and painted his dependance in such strong colours, and reminded him how narrowly he had escaped being hanged or banished as "a covenanter's spawn," that the heart of the poor boy swelled at times almost to breaking. Then the soldier would desire him to pray for his mother, and made him repeat a curious but earnest prayer full of quaint military technicalities, in which the good old halberdier saw nothing either unusual or outré. Often little Fenton came alone to seek that well-known grave, to linger and to sit beside it, for it was the only part of all broad Scotland that his soul clung to. The weeds were now matted over it, and the waving nettles half hid the humble stone, which with his own hands the kind soldier had placed there. Walter always cleared away those luxuriant weeds, and though they stung his hands, he felt them not. It was a nameless grave too, for the real name of her who slept within it was unknown to him; and the desolate child often stretched himself down on the turf, burying his face in the long grass, and weeping, as he had done in infancy on the poor bosom that mouldered beneath, retraced in memory, days of wandering and misfortune, of danger and sorrow, which he could not comprehend. Time, and that lightness of heart which is incident to youth, enabled him at last to view the grave with composure; but he sought it not the less, until after his return from Sedgemoor; he hastened to the well-known place, but, alas! the grave had been violated, and the charm of grief was broken for ever. Another had been buried there; the earth was freshly heaped up; and he rushed away, to return no more.
From childhood to youth the old Serjeant was his only protector: though poor, he was a kind and sincere one; and the little boy became the pet of the musqueteers.
A child, a dog, or a monkey is always an object of regard to an old soldier or sailor; for the human heart must love something.
Little Walter carried the halberdier's can of egg-flip when he mounted guard, learned to make up bandoliers of powder, polish a corslet, to rattle dice on a drumhead, and to beat on the drum itself; to fight with rapier and dagger; to handle a case of falchions like any sword-player; and became an adept at every game of chance, from kingly chess, to homely touch-and-take. He learned to drink "Confusion to the Covenant," in potent usquebaugh without winking once, and swear a few cavalier-like oaths. Like all such pets, he was often boxed severely, and roundly cursed too, at the caprice of his numerous masters, until the poor boy would have been altogether lost, his ideas corrupted, and his manners tainted by the roughness of camp and garrison, had not his humble patron been ordered away on the Tangier expedition; and being unable to take his little protégé with him, bethought him of craving the bounty of his commander's wife, the Countess of Dunbarton, a beautiful young English woman, who was the belle of the capital and the idol of the Scottish cavaliers. Struck with the soldier's story, envying his generosity, pitying the little boy, and pleased with his candour and beauty, she immediately took him under protection, adopting him as her page; and never was there seen a handsomer youth than Walter Fenton, when his coarse attire (a cast doublet of the serjeant) was exchanged for a coat of white velvet slashed with red and laced with gold, breeches and stockings of silk, a sash, a velvet cloak, and silver-hilted poniard; and his dark-brown hair curled and perfumed by Master Peter Pouncet, the famous frizzeur in the Bow. He parted in a flood of tears from his old patron, who slipped into his pocket a purse the Countess had bestowed on himself, drew his leather glove across his eyes, and hurried away.
At Lady Dunbarton's he had often seen Lilian Napier; she was then a little girl, and always accompanied her tall and stately relative in the vast old rumbling coach, with its two footmen behind and outriders in front, armed with sword and carbine; for the noble dame set forth in great state on all visits of ceremony. Lady Grizel's majestic aspect and frigid stateliness scared and awed the little footpage; but the prattle of the fair-haired Lilian soothed and charmed him, and he soon learned to love the little girl, to call her his sister, to be joyous when she came, and to be sad when she departed.
Young Walter, from his well-knit figure, and a determined aspect which he had acquired by his camp education, was as great a favourite among the starched little damoiselles of the Countess's withdrawing-room, as his clenched fist and bent brows made him a terror at times to the little cavaliers whose jealousy he excited; and his military preceptors (the old Royals, then battling and broiling at Tangiers) had inculcated a pugnacity of disposition that sometimes was very troublesome; and he once proceeded so far as to d—n the old Dowager of Drumsturdy pretty roundly, and draw his poniard on the young lord her son, who, with his companions, had mocked him as "a covenanter's brat." The Countess made him crave pardon of the little noble, and they shook hands like two cut-and-thrust gallants of six feet high.
But when their companions, with childish malevolence, taunted poor Walter as "my lord's loon," "the soldier's varlet," or "the powder puggy," epithets which always kindled his rage and drew tears from his eyes, Lilian, ever gentle and kind, wept with him, espoused his cause, and told that "Walter's mother was a noble lady, for the Countess had her ring of gold;" and the influence of the little nymph, with her cheeks like glowing peaches, and her bright hair flowing in sunny ringlets around a face ever beaming with happiness—was never lost, or failed to maintain peace among them. And thus days passed swiftly into years, and the girl was twelve and the boy sixteen when they were separated. Walter followed his noble patron to the field, when the landing of Argyle in the west, and Monmouth in the south, threw Britain into a flame. Dunbarton, now a general officer, marched with the Scottish forces against the former; but Walter, as a volunteer, served under Colonel Halkett, with a battalion of Scottish musqueteers, at the battle of Sedgemoor, where he felt what it was to have lead bullets rebounding from his buff coat and headpiece. Since then he had been serving as a private gentleman; but in a country like Scotland, swarming with idle young men of good birth and high spirit, who despised every occupation save that of arms, preferment came not, and he had too often experienced the mortification of seeing others obtain what he justly deemed his due, the commission of King James VII.
His recent interview with Lilian had recalled in full force all the friendship of their childhood and the dawning love of older years; but the manner in which he was now involved with the supreme authorities seemed to destroy all his hopes for ever—in Scotland at least; and yet, though that reflection wrung his heart, so little did he regret the part he had acted, that for Lilian's sake he would willingly run again, a hundred-fold greater risk. The last three years of his life had been spent amid the stirring turmoil of military duty in a discontented country, where each succeeding day the spirit of insurrection grew riper. In the rough society with which he mingled, never had he been addressed by a female so fair in face and so winning in manner as Lilian of Bruntisfield; and thus the charm of her presence acted more powerfully upon him. Her accents of entreaty and distress—her affection for Lady Grizel struggling with anxiety for himself, had in one brief interview recalled all the soft and happy impressions of his earlier and more innocent days, and love obtained a sway over his heart, that made him for a time forget his own dangerous predicament, in pondering with pleasure on the mortifications from which he had saved the ladies of Bruntisfield, the risks he had run for their sake, and consequently the debt of gratitude they owed him.
From his breast he drew forth her glove a hundred times, to admire its delicate texture and diminutive form; but he could not repress a bitter sigh when contemplating how slight were the chances of his ever again beholding the gentle owner, now when both unhappily were under the ban of the law,—she a homeless fugitive, and he a close prisoner, with death, imprisonment, or distant service in the Scots' Brigade his only prospects. Even were it otherwise,—and, oh! this idea was more tormenting than the first,—her heart might be dedicated to another; and she might, with the true pride of a noble Scottish maiden, deem it an unpardonable presumption in the poor and unhonoured pikeman to raise his eyes to the heiress of Sir Archibald Napier of Bruntisfield and the Wrytes. And thus, having introduced to the reader the grand feature upon which our story must "hinge," we shall get on with renewed ardour.
Ye holy martyrs, who with wond'rous faith,
And constancy unshaken have sustained
The rage of cruel men and fiery persecutions;
Come to my aid and teach me to defy
The malice of this fiend!
TAMERLANE.
The moon had passed westward; the close was gloomy as a chasm; and Walter's prison became dark as a cave in the bowels of a mountain. The clank of chains and bars as the door was opened roused the prisoner from his waking dreams; a yellow light flashed along the heavily jointed stone walls, and the harsh unpleasant voice of Macer Maclutchy cried authoritatively—
"Maister Walter Fenton!—now, then, come forth instanter. Ye are required by the Lords of the Privy Council."
A thrill shot through Walter's heart: he endeavoured in vain to suppress it, and, taking up his plain beaver hat, which was looped with a ribbon and cockade à la Monmouth in the military fashion, he descended the narrow spiral stair, preceded by the macer carrying his symbol of office on his right shoulder, and attired in a long flowing black gown. Two of the Town-guard, with their pole-axes, and Dunbraiken their captain,—a portly citizen, whose vast paunch, cased in corslet and backpiece, made him resemble a mighty tortoise erect,—kept close behind; and thus escorted, Walter set out from his prison, to appear before a select committee of the dreaded Privy Council of Scotland.
Encumbered by his long official garb, Macer Maclutchy's step was none of the most steady. He was evidently after his evening potations at Lucky Dreeps; he wore his bonnet cocked well forward; and such a provoking smirk of vulgar importance pervaded his features when, from time to time, he surveyed his prisoner, that the latter was only restrained by the axes behind from knocking him down.
In those days the hour of dinner was about one or two o'clock; but as the Earl of Perth, the Lords Clermistonlee, Mersington, and others loved their wine too well to leave it soon for dry matters of state, and the thumbscrewing of witches and non-conformists, the evening was far advanced before Walter Fenton was summoned for examination in the Laigh Chamber, where the Council held their meetings under the Parliament Hall, in a dark and gloomy region, where lights are always burned even yet during the longest days of summer.
Passing a narrow pend or archway (where, in the following year, the Lord President Lockhart was shot by Chiesly of Dairy), Walter and his conductors issued into the dark and deserted Lawnmarket, passed the Heart of Midlothian, from the western platform of which, the black beam of the gibbet stretched its ghastly arm in the moonlight,—and reached the antique Parliament Square, a quadrangle of quaint architecture, which had recently been graced by a beautiful statue of Charles II. On one side rose the square tower and gigantic façade of St. Giles, with its traceried windows, its rich battlements and carved pinnacles all glittering in the moonlight, which poured aslant over several immense piles of building raised on Venetian arcades, and made all the windows of the Goldsmiths' Hall glitter with the same pale lustre that tipped the round towers of the Tolbooth, the square turrets and circular spire of the Parliament House, the whole front of which was involved in opaque and gloomy shadow, from which the grand equestrian statue of King Charles, edged by the glorious moonlight, stood vividly forth like a gigantic horseman of polished silver.
The square was silent and still, as it was black and gloomy. A faint chorus stole on the passing wind, and then died away. It came from the hostel, or coffee-house, of Hugh Blair, a famous vintner, whose premises were under the low-browed and massive piazza before mentioned. The deep ding-dong of the cathedral bell, vibrating sonorously from the great stone chambers of the tower, made Walter start. It struck the hour of nine, and, save its echoes dying away in the hollow aisles and deep vaults of the ancient church, no other sound broke the silence of the place; and Walter felt a palpable chill sinking heavily on his spirit, when, guided by the macer, they penetrated the cold shade of the quadrangle, and by a richly carved doorway were admitted into the lobby of the house, which was spacious and lofty enough to be the hall of a lordly castle. From thence another door gave admittance into that magnificent place of assembly where once the estates of Scotland met—
"Ere her faithless sons betrayed her."
Its rich and intricate roof towered far away into dusky obscurity; its vast space and lofty walls of polished stone echoed hollowly to their footsteps; and the bright moon, streaming through the mullioned and painted windows, threw a thousand prismatic hues on the oaken floor, on the grotesque corbels, and innumerable knosps and gilded pendants of its beautiful roof,—on the crimson benches of the peers,—on the throne, with its festooned canopy,—on the dark banners and darker paintings, bringing a hundred objects into strong relief, sinking others in sombre shadow, and tipping with silver the square-bladed axes and conical helmets of the Town-guardsmen as they passed the great south oriel, with its triple mullions and heraldic blazonry.
From thence steep, narrow, and intricate stairs led them to the regions of the political Inquisition, and the wind that rushed upward felt cold and dewy as they descended. At the bottom there branched off a variety of stone passages, where flambeaux flared and cressets sputtered in the night wind, and cast their lurid light on the dusky walls. And now a confused murmur of voices announced to the anxious Fenton that he was close to this terrible conclave, whose presence few left but on the hurdle of the executioner.
In an anteroom a crowd of macers, city guardsmen, messengers-at-arms, and officials in the blue livery of the city, laced with yellow, and wearing the triple castle on their cuffs and collars, a number of persons cited as witnesses, &c., lounged about, or lolled on the wooden benches. The ceiling of the apartment was low, and the deep recesses of the doors and windows showed the vast solidity of the massively panelled walls. A huge fire blazed in a grate that resembled an iron basket on four sturdy legs, and its red light glinted on the varied costumes, the weather-beaten visages, polished headpieces and partisans of those who crowded round it. The entrance of Walter Fenton and his escort excited neither attention nor curiosity; and feeling acutely his degraded position, he sought a retired corner, and seated himself on a wooden bench. The groups around him conversed only in whispers. A murmur of voices came at intervals from the inner chamber; and Walter often gazed with deep interest at its antiquely fashioned doorway, the features of which remained long and vividly impressed on his memory; for he longed to behold, but dreaded to encounter, the stern conclave its carved panels concealed from his view.
Anon a cry—a shrill and fearful cry—announced that some dreadful work was being enacted within; every man looked gravely in his neighbour's face, (save Maclutchy, who smiled,) and the blood rushed back on Walter's heart tumultuously. Deep, hollow, and heart-harrowing groans succeeded; then were heard the sound of hammers and the creaking of a block as when a rope runs rapidly through the sheave; then a low murmur of voices again, and all was still; so still, that Walter heard the pulsations of his heart, and in spite of his natural courage, it quailed at the prospect of what he too might have to undergo.
Suddenly the door of the dreaded chamber flew open, and the common Doomster and his two assistants, with their muscular arms bared, and their leather aprons girt up for exertion, issued forth, bearing the half lifeless and wholly miserable Ichabod Bummel. His countenance was pale and ghastly; his teeth were clenched, and his eyes set; his limbs hanging pendant and powerless, bore terrible evidence of the agonies caused by the iron boots, as his fingers, covered with blood, did of the thumb-screws. He groaned heavily.
"What has the gallows loon confessed, Pate?" asked Maclutchy, eagerly.
"Sae muckle, that the pyets will be pyking his head on the Netherbow-porte when the sun rises the morn," replied Mr. Patrick Pincer, the heartless finisher of the law, whose brawny arms and blood-stained apron, together with all the disgusting associations of his frightful occupation rendered him a revolting character. "He defied the haill council as a generation o' vipers; boasted o' being a naturalized Hollander, and denied his ain mother-country."
"Wretch!" muttered Bummel, "well might I deny the land that produces such as thee. But there is yet a time, and in Heaven is all my trust."
"Silence in court!" said the macer, imperiously thrusting the brass crown of his baton in the sufferer's mouth. "Ay, ay, denying his ain country, eh?"
"Till my Lord Clermistonlee recommended a touch o' the caspie-claws, and wow, Sirs, the loon stood them brawly, but when we gied him a twinge wi' the airn buits, my certie! they did mak' him skirl! Did ye no hear him confessing, lads?"
"What! what?"
"Ou just onything they asked him. Treason, awfu' to hear; about a Dutch invasion and a rebellion among the Westland whigs, to whom he shewed letters from Flume o' Polwarth, Fagel the Pensioner o' Holland, Dyckvelt the Flemish spy, and a' hidden whar d'ye think?"
"Deil kens; in his wame, may be."
"Hoots; sewit up in the lining o' his braid bonnet."
The poor fainting preacher had now the felicity of being stared at by a crowd who pitied him no more than the strong-armed torturers whose grasp sustained his supine and inert frame.
"Soldier," said he to one near him, "art thou a son of the Roman antichrist?"
"Na, I am Habbie, the son o' my faither, auld John Elshender, a cottar body, at the Burghmuirend."
"Then, in the name of God," implored the poor man in a weak and wavering voice, "give me but a drop o' water to quench my thirst, for, oh youth, I suffer the torments of hell!"
The soldier who seemed to be a good-natured young fellow, readily brought a pitcher of water, from which Bummel drank greedily and convulsively, muttering at intervals,
"'Tis sweet—sweet as aqua-coelestis, whilk is thrice rectified wine. Heaven bless thee, soldier, and reward thee, for I cannot." He burst into tears.
"Hath he taken the test," asked Maclutchy, "and did he acknowledge the king's authority?"
"Ou onything, and so would you, Maclutchy, gif I had ye under my hand as I'll soon hae that young birkie in the corner."
"'Tis false!" cried Ichabod Bummel, through his clenched teeth, "and sooner than acknowledge that bloody and papistical duke, I would kiss, yea, and believe the book of the accursed Mohamet, whilk as I shew in my 'Bombshell aimit at the taile of the great Beast,' was written on auld spule banes, and kept by the gude wife of the impostor in a meal girnel. But fie! and out upon ye, fiends, for lo, the hour of our triumph and deliverance from tyrants and massemongers is at hand. O, why tarry the chariot wheels of our Deliverer?"
"I like ane owl in desart am,
That nightly——"
"What!" exclaimed Maclutchy, in legal horror, "would ye dare to skirl a psalm within earshot o' the very Lords o' Council, ye desperate cheat, the woodie! Awa wi' him by the lug and horn, or he'll bring the roof about us." He was hurried off.
Walter was deeply moved. Pity and indignation stirred his heart by turns, but he had not much time for reflection; at that moment the drawling voice of the crier was heard, calling with a cadence peculiar to the Scottish courts,
"Maister-Walter-Fenton."