"I never met with an adept, or saw such a medicine, though I had fervently prayed for it. Then, I said, 'Surely you are a learned physician?' 'No,' said he, 'I am a brass-founder, and lover of chemistry.'"—BRANDE.
The king was seated in one of the apartments of that stately tower of Holyrood, that still bears his name, which until recently was visible on the front thereof, carved and gilt in gothic letters,—
Jac. Rex. V. Scotorum.
One window opened towards the abbey hill, an eminence then covered with apple-trees and other wood in full foliage; a path ran round its base, and another crossed its summit. The first led to the castle of Restalrig and St. Margaret's gifted well: the second was the ancient Easter-road to Leith. It was then, and for long after, destitute of houses; Gordon, in his View of Edinburgh, taken in 1617, represents only eight small dwellings on this now populous eminence and the Croft-an-Righ that lay between it and the walls of the abbey church.
The other window afforded a view of the Calton with its rocks of basalt, then bare, desolate, and unfrequented, with the eagle hovering over their summits, as if to show that his prey, the ptarmigan, the red grouse, and the black cock, were not far off.
The sun was setting, and its warm light fell aslant upon the waving orchards of Holyrood; the square towers and magnificent doorway of its church, and the green coppice on which the king was gazing listlessly, with one hand resting on the neck of his favourite old hound Bash, and the other thrust among the thick curls of his auburn hair, as a support to his head. The passers were few. A mendicant friar, with his begging-box and staff, came slowly over the hill; a knight, armed nearly cap-à-pié for travelling, spurred from the Watergate, and his armour was seen flashing in the sunbeams, among the foliage as he rode towards Restalrig. The king was lost in reverie, and sat with his eyes fixed on the sparrows that twittered on the massive gratings of the large window.
The illness of that fair young bride whom he loved so passionately pressed heavy on his heart; the more painfully so, that from its perplexing and apparently mysterious nature, it seemed utterly beyond the reach of alleviation. She laboured under a rapid consumption, of the nature of which Francis I. had repeatedly warned James V.; but young, ardent, and impetuous, her royal lover would listen to nothing save the dictates of his passion; and slighting the love of Mary of Lorraine (his future wife), he had wedded Magdalene. Now, despite all the skill of his physicians, and the care of her own attendants, the young queen, within twenty days after her landing in Scotland, was almost hovering on the brink of the tomb.
As day by day she sank more and more, the Countess of Arran declared that the fairies were extracting all her strength; others averred solemnly and gravely, that she was under the influence of witchcraft: for it was an age fraught with the wildest superstition. An illness such as hers, when the secret source of decay was unseen and unknown to the quack physicians and astrologers who surrounded her couch, made their restless credulity readily adopt the idea of mystic agency.
The time was full of fanciful terrors; the dispensations of God were invariably attributed to magic invocations and demoniac maledictions; to invisible shafts from the elves and fairies who peopled every rock, hill, and tree, the only antidotes to which were the prescriptions and the counter-charms of impostors and self-deluded dabblers in the occult sciences. Dreams, in those days, the result doubtless of ponderous suppers and morbid constitutions, were received as visions of the future, as solemn forewarnings and divine inspirations from God—fraught sometimes with happiness, but more frequently with death and terror, war and woe.
Thus the poor young queen, whose orient eyes while they sank never lost their lustre, and whose cheek while it grew hollow still retained its rosy and transparently beautiful hue, continued to waste and grow thinner; and the king with agony saw daily how her snowy arms and infantile hands were wearing less and less, until the bones became fearfully visible at last.
He sighed, he prayed, and he wept; but still the blasting, the wasting, the terrible attenuation went on. Her skin was white as marble, but ever hot and feverish; and though a gentle smile played ever on her lips, there was a wild, sad earnestness in her large blue eyes, in the quiet depths of which two orient stars—the stars of death—were ever shining. Everything that love could prompt and quackery advise, had been done; she was bathed repeatedly in the waters of streams that ran towards the sun; and in those of blessed and sanctified wells, which the saints had consecrated of old—but unavailingly.
Barefooted, with bowed head, and candle in hand, the king had visited many a holy shrine; but still Magdalene became worse; and it was evident to all that the hand of death would soon be upon her—unless, as many added, the spell was broken.
Suddenly the arras (which was of green damask flowered with gold) was shaken. The king started. It was raised, and there entered a man, whom a few words will describe.
"Well, most worthy deacon and doctor," said James, springing eagerly towards him; "what thinkest thou of the queen?"
The new comer mournfully shook his head and stroked his beard.
The young king clasped his hands, and, pushing a chair towards the physician, sank into his own.
John of the Silvermills was an old man with keen grey eyes that twinkled under bushy brows; a long hooked nose; a vast white beard that flowed over his sad-coloured cassock-coat. He wore a black velvet skull-cap, on the front of which were embroidered a cross and a triangle within a circle—being the emblems of Religion, the Trinity, and Eternity. His form was bent by age; his back was almost deformed, and one of his tremulous but active hands clutched a long silver-headed cane; the other, a small sand-glass, which supplied the place of a watch with the physicians of that age.
Patronized by King James IV., who had been an eminent dabbler in alchemy, he was the first deacon of the Barber Chirurgeons of Scotland, whom that monarch had incorporated by royal charter in the year 1505; when every guild brother was obliged to pay five pounds to the altar of St. Mungo of Glasgow, and prove his knowledge of "anatomie, the nature and complexioun of everie member of the human bodie; and in lykwayis, all the vaynis of the samyn, that he may mak flewbothamea in dew tyme; and alsua that he may know in quhilk member the Signe has domination for the tyme;" for then astronomy, astrology, and alchemy formed the principal part of a medical education; and King James IV. spent vast sums on the wild experiments of the learned John, at his laboratory, from which a district of our capital then obtained and still retains the name of Silvermills.
"Ah, my God! and thou,—thou hast no good tidings for me, my venerable friend?" said the young king, imploringly, as he seated himself.
"The queen's grace is assuredly in great dolour and sore pain," replied the physician, resting his chin on the top of his cane, and fixing his keen eyes on the anxious and beautiful face of the young monarch; "she complains of an aching head, of a burning heart, and of a constant weariness and lassitude which overwhelm her. There is something in all this which perplexes me, and it seemeth——"
"Beyond thy skill, in short? But oh, say not that!"
"Nay, nay," continued the mediciner, who spoke slowly, while his keen visage shook on the staff where he had perched it; "but I must give it long and deep thought. I am assured—at least I hope—there is in my pharmacopœia some simple that will restore her. That learned apothegar and worshipful clerk (though I agree with him in few things), Galen, the physician of Pergamus, possessed a manuscript which enumerated fifty thousand families of the vegetable world, with all their restorative or destructive qualities. Oh, for one glimpse of that glorious volume! In all things following strictly the rules laid down by the learned Artesius (who lived a thousand years by that very elixir, the secret of which is, at this time, enabling Paracelsus to work so many miraculous cures), in the year 1509, I compounded my nepenthe, a drug which driveth away all manner of pain, and my opobalsamum, which was powerful, even as the blessed Balm of Gilead; to the queen's grace I have administered them both for the past week, and yet, miraculous to relate, she daily groweth worse."
"My wife! my heart!" said the king, again wringing his hands; "must I see my poor dear little Magdalene perish thus? I love her too much, and perhaps God is about to take her from me. Oh! canst thou do nothing for her?"
"I was at the University of Basil in 1525, storing my mind with fresh knowledge, when Paracelsus, by the recommendation of Œcolampadius, was called to fill the chair of physic and surgery, and was present on that day when he so presumptuously burned the works of Avicenna and Galen, assuring us that the latchets of his shoes knew more of physic than both these learned doctors; and that all the universities and all the writers of the earth, past and present, knew less than the smallest hair of his beard; for he had in his brain the mighty secret which would prolong life for ever—yea, even unto the verge of eternity—the secret of Artesius."
"This was the very madness of learning and vanity," said the king. "Well?"
"Erasmus believed in him, and was cured of a grievous illness by one drop of the principal ingredient."
"What, Desiderius Erasmus, of Rotterdam, the tutor of my brother Alexander, who fell at Flodden? Well, well—and this——"
"Ingredient was a simple used of old by a king of Egypt, and it is now written in hieroglyphics on the southern side of the great pyramid."
"And those hieroglyphics?"
"None can read save sorcerers; for Paracelsus on that day, at Basil, destroyed, with the works of Avicenna, the sole existing key thereto, and which was written on a blank leaf thereof."
"May the devil confound thee, Paracelsus, and the great pyramid to boot! I fear me much, thy musty magic will never cure the queen."
"I pardon your majesty's anger, for it hath its source in grief," replied John of the Silvermills, calmly; "nature is full of mysteries. Our cradle and our coffin may be formed from the same tree, and yet we be ignorant thereof. Paracelsus——"
"I say again, Mahound take Paracelsus! but what doth this trite remark mean?"
"That, like the mass of the unlettered world, your majesty scoffs at what appears incomprehensible, and——"
The apothegar paused, for the arras was raised by a hand covered by a glove of fine scarlet leather, and Cardinal Beaton, who at all hours had the entrée of the king's apartments, stood before them, and both king and subject knelt to kiss his ring.
"The peace of the Lord be with thee and with thy spirit!" said the cardinal, seating himself, and looking kindly at the king, whose grief and distress were marked in every feature of his fine face. "In the ante-chamber I have heard how poorly her majesty is, and Mademoiselle Brissac has just been imploring my prayers, poor child! But proceed, my learned doctor," he added, with a slight smile; while the deacon of the surgeons again perched his chin on the top of his cane, which was half hidden by his long white beard, and thus continued—
"Your majesty rails at the learned Paracelsus; I can afford to pardon that, when I remember me that to him we are indebted for introducing to the pharmacopœia, the mercurial, the antimonial, and ferruginous preparations which act so beneficially upon the organs of our system."
"But is not this Paracelsus, of whom thou boastest, an impure pantheist," asked the cardinal, "who, while believing in the existence of pure spirits which are without souls, receives aliment from minerals and fluids, and whose physiological theories are a wild mass of the most incoherent ideas, founded almost solely upon an application of the damnable mysteries of the cabala to the natural functions of the frame which God has given us?"
"I do not quite understand your eminence," replied John of the Silvermills, turning, with as much asperity as he dared, to the cardinal, whose towering figure and magnificent dress were imposing enough, without the memory of that important position held by him; "but I understand, and, with Paracelsus, believe (what certain malevolent commentators have denied) that the sun hath an influence upon the heart, as the moon hath upon the brain; that Jupiter acts upon the liver, as Saturn doth upon the spleen, Mercury on the lungs, Mars on the bile, and Venus on the kidneys and certain other organs. Hence the true apothegar should know the planets of the microcosm, their meridian, and their zodiac, before he attempteth to cure a disease. By due attention to them, he attains the discovery of the most hidden secrets of nature; for our human bodies are but a conglomeration of sulphur, of mercury, and of immaterial salt, which rendereth them peculiarly liable to planetary influences; and as each of these three elements may admit of another, we may, without knowing it, possess within us water that is dry, and fire that is cold."
"A subtle sophist," said the cardinal, with a smile.
The king listened in silence, and, full of Paracelsus, the doctor continued—
"Thus, please your eminence, by identifying himself with the celestial intelligences, hath this wondrous physician so nearly attained a knowledge of the philosopher's stone, and, by curing all diseases, raised to his fame a monument based on the four quarters of the earth. And doubtless if he prolongeth his own life, as he doth that of others, in time to come he will attain the secret of that other powerful ELIXIR, by which Adam and the patriarchs prolonged their lives before the Deluge—yea, even unto nine centuries."
"Gramercy me!" said the cardinal; "and beware thee, John! this man whom thou upholdest glories in the fame of his sorcery, and openly boasts of receiving from Galen letters that are dated from Hell, and also of his recent disputes held with Avicenna at the gate of that dread abode—disputes on the transmutation of metals, the elixir of the patriarchs, and the quintessence of the Mithridate; for I heard of all these things when I was studying the canon law at Paris. He blasphemously takes as his primary supports the writings of the holy fathers; and while asserting that the blessed Gospels lead to all manner of truth, dares to add, that magical medicine can be learned by the study of the Apocalypse alone."
"Enough of this, lord cardinal," said the king, impatiently observing that the doctor was angrily adjusting his velvet cap preparatory to returning to the charge; "enough of this jargon, amid which my poor Magdalene will probably die."
"It may be so, though God avert it; for the disease is all but beyond my skill; and I dread to state my suspicions, now that both my nepenthe and opobalsamum have failed."
"Thy suspicions?" reiterated the cardinal.
"I know them already," said the king, gloomily. "Like the Countess of Arran, thou wouldest say that she is under a spell?"
"Which nothing but a counter-spell can break."
"Mother of God!" said the king, "I cannot believe in such things! Lord cardinal, dost thou?"
"And what manner of charm, deacon?" asked the cardinal, affecting not to hear the king; for he did not scoff at sorcery, though he did at Paracelsus.
"A muild, as our peasants call it. She may have trod upon a muild, which is a powder of potent effect, prepared from the bones of the dead, and scattered by sorcerers in the path of their enemies. We all know that, at the Sabaoth of the witches, sepulchres are violated, corpses are dismembered, and the limy particles of the bones pulverised to operate as mischiefs upon mankind. At this time the queen hath all the symptoms of one who hath trod upon an enchanted muild, or dieth of pricked images—for they are the same. A swarting of the heart, a fluttering of the breast. When the patients will merely sicken they turn red—when they will die, they turn pale."
"And the queen is pale?" said the cardinal.
"Yea, even as death."
"The cure—the cure?" sighed the king.
"There are two: the first is, to find a certain reptile, forming one of the six species of salamanders which are indigenous in southern Europe, in the head whereof is a red stone, to be taken as a powder. For it is written by Paracelsus——"
"Paracelsus again!" said James, stamping his foot; "the second cure?"
"Is to burn the sorcerer."
"Then Sir Adam Otterburn must sift this matter to its bottom."
"Ah, that reminds me," said the doctor, rising up, and clutching his sand-glass; "I must now retire, with your majesty's leave."
"To visit Sir Adam? I knew not that he ailed."
"A sword-thrust."
"From whom?"
"Sir Roland Vipont."
"Vipont again!" said James V., knitting his brows; "thus it is my friends are ever slaying each other. But he, my most valiant and true friend, has been quite besotted by those Setons of Ashkirk."
"He knew not of their arrest," said the cardinal; "it was a sudden rencontre—a quarrel."
"Oh, in that case, I have nothing to do with such little amusements. The Countess of Ashkirk?"
"Is in Barncleugh's ward at Inchkeith."
"Where I will keep her as long as James I. kept Euphemia of Ross on Inchcolin. An old intriguing limmer! And the Lady Jane?"
"Hath escaped to—no one knows where."
"Poor damsel! I feel some compunction for her, and fear that she hath been sorely misled by that deep old Douglas her mother. And then the earl?"
"Hath vanished too."
"To England?"
"Most probably."
"But is Redhall's wound severe!" asked James.
The cardinal turned to the doctor.
"A fair run through the body, at the shoulder," said the physician. "'Twas well for him that Mercury, which influences the lungs, was not in Abdevinam, or the lord advocate's gown had been vacant."
"Vipont goeth from bad to worse," said the king, as the cardinal turned away to conceal his laughter. "Kincavil run through the body one day, my lord advocate the next. We must restrain his vivacity. In this spirit, Vipont will achieve little in Douglasdale; but let him bear in mind the vow I made when Sir David Falconer, the captain of my guard, was slain when covering the retreat of the artillery from Tantallan!"
"I hope your majesty will remember as well your gracious promise anent the charter, exempting our learned corporation from watching and warding, and all manner of military service within the city, save in time of siege."
"Does your eminence hear?" said James, with a smile, to the cardinal.
"It is just passing the seals," replied the chancellor; "and I will send the Lord Lindesay with it to-morrow—so, meantime, farewell."
The cardinal, who had more sense than a thousand such as Paracelsus or John of the Silvermills, wisely recommended the king to remove his suffering bride to Balmerino (in Fifeshire), a Cistercian abbey, founded by the queen of William the Lion, Ermengarde de Beaumont, whose grave lay there, before the high altar. In this magnificent old pile, which was dedicated to St. Mary, apartments were prepared for the sickly Magdalene. In a rich and pastoral district, it occupied a beautiful situation, among fruitful orchards and the remains of an old primeval forest, sheltered on one side by verdant hills, and fanned on the other by the cool breeze from the bright blue basin of the Tay.
On a sunny morning in June, under a salute of cannon from the castle, amid which the vast report of Old Mons or rather Monce Meg of Galloway was conspicuous, the young queen, with her anxious husband riding by her litter, and attended by a select number of courtiers (forming, however, a long cavalcade of horse), was conveyed from Holyrood to Leith, where Sir Robert Barton's ship received and landed her two hours after, on the yellow sands of Fife. From thence they crossed the deep and fertile glen called the Howe, and, descending the Scurr Hill, approached Balmerino.
With many deep sighs and portentous shakes of the head, all indicative of what no one could divine, John of the Silvermills had to abandon his smoke-begrimed laboratory near the water of Leith, and accompany the court; carrying his books of Paracelsus, Galen, and Avicenna, and the anatomical works of Hippocrates, Herophilus, and of the great modern, Vesalius (the exposer of the errors of Galen), with all his retorts, crucibles, chafing-dishes, horoscopes, and other scientific rubbish, packed on sumpter-horses, by which much irreparable damage was sustained by certain glass phials and bottles that contained—the Lord alone knew what; but one was said to be the famous powder of projection, which when thrown upon heated mercury or lead, turned them into silver or gold, and the loss whereof made the patient John rend his long beard, and passionately bequeath himself to the devil a hundred times.
"If Magdalene groweth well here," said the king to the cardinal, as they dismounted at the gate of the monastery, "to your eminence alone will Scotland and I be indebted for her recovery; but if she becometh worse, and our suspicions are confirmed, then woe to the authors of her illness—woe!"
"Oh, misery!
While I was dragged by an insidious band
Of pyrates—savage bloodhounds—into bondage.
But, witness, heaven! witness, ye midnight hours,
That heard my ceaseless groans, how her dear image
Grew to my very heart!"—The Desart Island, 1760.
Sleepless, and with the horrible conversation of Birrel and Dobbie still tingling in his ears, Roland passed the night in that frame of mind we have endeavoured to describe, though it can be better conceived.
The morning dawned, and the thick gratings of the windows appeared in strong relief against the saffron sky, and sounds of life arose from the waking city below. The bright sun was gilding the vane of St. Giles, the spire of the Dominicans, the square tower of St. Mary-in-the-Fields, and the lofty summits of the town, while, like a golden snake, the Forth was seen winding afar between the wooded mountains of the west.
With arms folded, his head sunk upon his breast, and his hollow eyes fixed dreamily on the floor, Roland was immersed in a chaos of gloomy thoughts, when a noise occasioned by a hand raising a window opposite startled him. He looked up, and a letter fell at his feet.
He clutched and tore it open.
"Jane! from Jane—from my dear Jane?" he exclaimed, huskily, and pressed her signature to his lips. "It is signed by herself (how well I know that dear signature!) but another has written it—St. Bernard, perhaps. Ah, my God! she is too ill to write, and they separate me from her. Jane—Jane!"
Now Sir Roland Vipont, though a poor gentleman and soldier of fortune of the sixteenth century, knew enough of scholarcraft (which, like every other craft, was not held then in much repute) to enable him to decipher the letter of Jane Seton, or rather that letter which, by the order of Redhall, Birrel had compelled her to sign by the bribe alternately offered and withheld—a draught of cold water.
For a time there was an envious mist before the hot dry eyes of Roland Vipont; and thrice he had to pause before he so far recovered his energies as to be able to read this epistle, which had been thus delivered to him by the hand of a friend, as he did not doubt. Literally, it ran as follows:
"MINE OWN SWEET HEART, SIR ROLAND,
"Abandoned now by my evil Mentor, and inspired by the blessed saints, who know all things, uninfluenced by any man, and of mine own free will, I hereby confess, certify, and make known unto you, that I have indeed been guilty of the sorcery and witchcraft of which I am accused; and that queen Magdalene died by the same magic and power of enchantment which forced thee to love me. Thus, the strong regard thou bearest me is in no way attributable to any beauty, manner, or apparent goodness, with which nature hath gifted me; but solely to my diabolical arts and sorceries. At this thou wilt be sorely grieved, but cannot be surprised, mine own sweet heart, when thou thinkest of the myriad infernal deeds that are permitted by Heaven and brought about by the instigation of Satan, to whom I have borne more than one brood of imps. I saw that thou wert simple, guileless, good, and brave; and thus were fitted to fall easily into my snares, where many have fallen before thee; but Heaven, by revealing my sins, hath saved thee in time. And I do further confess that I am a false traitor, a dyvour heretic and renouncer of my baptism. Written for me, by a learned clerk, at the Castle of Edinburgh, the 17th day of July, in the year of God I^m V^c xxxvii.
"JANE SETON."
"My Jane! my Jane! oh, this is hell's own work!" exclaimed the unhappy young man; who became stricken with terror at avowals which were so startling and so well calculated to make a deep impression on any man, and on any mind of his time, when a belief in the power of the devil was so strong. "This agony, and not the love I bear thee, is the work of sorcery. It is a forgery—I will never believe it; and yet her signature is there! and after trial, when torture, shame, and agony were past, what could bring forth an avowal such as this? Oh, what but remorse for deceiving one who had loved thee so well! The mother of fiends! she so good, so charitable, so religious, who never missed a mass or festival. I shudder and laugh at the same moment! A sorceress—Jane .... where is the Jane I loved—the good and gentle? She confront the terrors of hell—the touch of Satan?—impossible—frenzy and folly; and yet, and yet, and yet my brain is turned, and I feel as if a serpent had thrust its head into my heart."
Thus thought Roland, incoherently.
All the implicit trust of a lover, and the blind chivalric devotion of a true gentleman of the year 1537, failed to bear up Vipont against the chilling superstition which then overshadowed every mind and everything, and which tinges the writings of the most subtle casuists and philosophers of those days; and assuredly one could not expect much deep casuistry or philosophy either to be exhibited by Roland, whose school had been the camp, and whose playground in boyhood had been the corpse-strewn battle-fields of France and Italy. It was an age of fairy spells and magic charms, mysterious omens, and gliding spectres—of ten thousand deadly and now forgotten terrors; and we must enter fully into the feelings of the age to appreciate or conceive the frightful effect this unsought for and unexpected avowal of supernatural crime produced upon the mind of Roland Vipont.
His first impulse was to stigmatize the letter as the most deliberate of forgeries, to rend it into a hundred fragments, and to scatter them from the window on the waters of the loch below; but the memory of the words those fragments contained, and their terrible import, remained as if written with fire upon his soul, and wherever he turned he saw them palpably before him; thus, at times, the most cruel doubts were added to his former despair.
He felt that his mental agony was rapidly becoming too great for endurance; and he shrunk, as it were, back within himself with terror at the idea that he might become insane.
The pride of his strong and gallant heart—a heart that had never quailed amid the boom of cannon and the shock of spears, the rush of charging squadrons and the clang of descending swords—was now bowed down; and covering his face with his hand, he wept like a child, and with that deep and deathlike agony that can only be known by the strong man when forced to find a refuge and relief in tears.
Redhall, that tiger-heart, had calculated well and deeply. The sight of those tears, produced by the letter he had so cruelly and so subtly contrived, would have been as balm to his heart, and as "marrow to his bones;" for he laughed aloud when Nichol Birrel, by dawn of day, related, in exaggerated terms, the agony of Vipont, which he had neither the means of observing or ascertaining; for he had simply, by the assistance of a ladder, dropped the letter into his apartment, and hurried away.
"The measure of my vengeance against this man is now almost full!" said he; "woe be to him who would lessen it! To have destroyed her while this Vipont believed in her innocence would have left that vengeance but half sated. Now have I fairly robbed her of her honour and her very soul—at least, in the eyes of this gilded moth, who loves her, as I know, even to adoration; but not more than I do—oh, no!—not more than I, who am her destroyer, and on whose hands her blood will lie. Oh, Jane!...."
His head fell forward on his breast.
"But harkye, Birrel," said he, suddenly recovering; "to-day the cardinal goes to Falkland, to seek her pardon from the king; and this pardon (if granted) young Leslie of Balquhan is to convey straight to Sir James Riddel, at our castle here. Now mark me, Nichol Birrel, and mark me well, this pardon must be brought to me, and to me alone. 'Tis an insult of this meddling cardinal to send it to Cranstoun-Riddel, the castellan, while I am lord advocate. This very day, after morning mass, his eminence and this holiday lieutenant of the guards, set out for Falkland. Do thou, with Trotter and fifteen, or as many good horsemen as you can muster, follow, and watch well for Leslie's return. Be more wary than you were in Douglasdale, or what avail your promises of service? Between this and Falkland there is many a mile of lonely muirland, where blows may be struck, or bones broken, and where a slain man may sleep undiscovered till the judgment-day—see to it! This Leslie is in your hands, as Vipont was before. A hundred French crowns if thou bringest me the pardon. Stay!—there is the Laird of Chitto, who hath a plea before the lords; tell him, that if he wishes well to his ease, a certain horseman must not pass the Lomond-hill; there are the Lindesays of Kirkforthar and Bandon, who are the sworn foemen of the House of Balquhan. I know thy skill and cunning—ride and rouse them! Ride and raise all the Howe of Fife on the king's messenger; and here is my thumb on't, Nichol Birrel, my three best crofts at Redhall shall be thine of a free gift, heritably and irredeemably, to thee and thine heirs for ever."
In one hour from that time this indefatigable ruffian had Tam Trotter and fifteen other horsemen completely armed, with helmets and cuirasses, gorgets, and gloves of steel, swords, lances, and petronels, awaiting his orders (and the cardinal's departure) in the stable yard of Redhall's lodging in the Canongate.
"Farewell Falkland, the fortress of Fyfe,
Thy polite park, under the Lawmound law;
Sumtyme in thee I led a lusty lyfe,
The fallow deer to see thaim raik on raw,
Court men to cum to thee, they stand grait aw,
Sayand thy burgh bene of all burrowis baill,
Because in thee, they never gat gude aill."
Complaynt of the Papingo.
By the machinations of Redhall, and the subtle ability of Birrel, his messenger, there lay many a deadly barrier, and many a sharp sword, between the gallant Leslie and the city of Edinburgh.
The last rays of the sun had vanished from the furzy sides and green summit of the East Lomond, once called the Hill of the Goats, in the language of the Celtic Scots, when he quitted the park of Falkland, and struck into an ancient horseway, which, under the shadow of many a venerable oak-tree, led him towards Kirkforthar; and soon the hill of Clatto became visible as it rose about five miles distant on his left.
At that very time a party of horsemen, well armed with lances, two-handed swords, and daggers, and wearing steel caps, with jacks of mail, rode round by the edge of a great and dreary peat-moss, which then lay at the base of Clatto Hill; and passing the old chapel of Kirkforthar, concealed themselves in a thicket of beech-trees, near an ancient mill, some moss-grown fragments of which are still remaining in the highway. There two of their number dismounted, and borrowing a couple of shovels from a neighbouring cottage, with the utmost deliberation, after carefully removing the green turf, proceeded to dig a grave.
Of these horsemen, fifteen were Redhall's own vassals, led, not by Birrel, for that arch-conspirator had reserved unto himself another part in this cruel and cowardly drama, but by Tam Trotter and Dobbie, both of whom felt their personal importance and dignity increased to an unlimited extent by this command; and Dobbie's cat-like visage wore a comical expression of martial ferocity, as it peeped out of the depths of a vast helmet of the sixteenth century.
The other horsemen were led by John Seaton of Clatto, the representative of a family which had long been infamous for its lawless acts and readiness to perform any outrage. The ruins of their tower are still to be seen at the south-east end of Lathrisk, as the parish was then named.
The old road from Cupar to Kinghorn passed through a gorge, called Clatto Den, and in the face of the mountain which overhung that narrow bridlepath there lay a cavern, the mouth of which was concealed, but whose recesses afforded a subterranean communication with the vaults of the strong tower above; and there the bandit family of Clatto were wont to rush out and butcher those unsuspecting persons who rashly passed through the den alone, either by night or by day. James IV., when travelling with two esquires, had narrowly escaped assassination there; but cutting a passage through, escaped, leaving one of his assailants minus a hand. In his ignorance of the owner's free propensities, the king took shelter in the tower, when finding that Seaton's sixth son was maimed, the guilt of the family came to light; the secret passage to the tower was discovered; the old ruffian laird and all his sons were hanged, save John the youngest, who, being then a child, escaped to figure on the present occasion.
Justice was more severely administered under James V.; thus, the exchequer of the Laird of Clatto being somewhat low, the accoutrements of his fourteen horsemen were rather dilapidated and rusty; but, like their riders, the horses of his troop were fresh, strong, sinewy, and active. Having a plea anent meithes and marches with the Boswells of Dovan, the promise of a decision in his favour had drawn him from his lair on the dark errand of Redhall.
The cavern that lay below his tower is now concealed, by the impending side of the den having fallen down a few years ago, and choked up the entrance; but the peasantry still point to the place with fear and abhorrence.
Rendered thirsty by a six miles' trot from the tower of Clatto, John Seaton, while his men were coolly digging a grave, went boldly to the mill of Kirkforthar and demanded a cup of ale, upon which the miller gave it submissively, and without asking a question, for he knew that it was as much as the lives of his whole family were worth, to ask on what errand the Laird of Clatto was abroad in the gloaming.
"Harkee, miller," said he, with a grin, exhibiting (between his bushy moustaches and beard, which almost concealed the cheek-plates of his open helmet) a set of those sharp white teeth, which bespeak a strong healthy fellow, who is often hungry but always happy: "Harkee, carle miller; haud fast your yett, steek close your een and lugs, and steek them ticht, for the next twa hoors; and tak' ye tent to hear nocht else, but ablins the splash o' your milnwheel, till the mune glints abune the moss."
"Langer, gif it please ye, laird," replied the poor miller, trembling.
"Ou, that will be lang enow; but tak' tent o' my words; hear ye nocht, and see ye nocht; or I may come doon by the Mossend some braw nicht, and the mill o' Kirkforthar will be toom o' a tenant in the morning; keep close by your ingle cheek, carle, for the chields o' Clatto winna thole steering."
And carefully wiping a few drops of ale from his cuirass, which was magnificently cut, worked, and inlaid with the most rare damascene work, he left the low thatched mill, and sprang on horseback.
Meanwhile Leslie was galloping by the northern base of the East Lomond. His horse was a strong and active roadster, which he had received from the king's master-stabler. Fortunately he had taken the precaution to retain his armour, which was a ribbed Italian suit, studded with gilded nails, and on the globose cuirass of which his coat of arms were engraved. His gauntlets were overlapping plates, without finger-scales, thus, with the ample steel hilt of the sword, forming a double protection for the right hand. His arms were a long straight rapier and dagger, and at the bow of his demipique saddle he had a pair of firelock dagues, or pistols. The latter every gentleman carried when travelling; and the former were as necessary to a cavalier of the time as his feather or spurs.
His horse having lost a shoe, the delay caused by the necessity of having this loss repaired by a roadside Vulcan made the evening dusk before he approached the mill of Kirkforthar. The summer moon shone brightly in the blue sky, and clearly and strongly the outlines of wood and mountain rose against it.
On Leslie's right rose the steep Lomond; and on his left extended the vast moss, amid the wilderness of which many a deep pool of water lay gleaming in the moonlight. The district was desolate and wild; but no idea of danger or of molestation occurred to the mind of the solitary horseman, who rapidly approached the mill of Kirkforthar, where the dark foliage of some old beech-trees overshadowed both sides of the way; and where, save the cry of the cushat-dove, all was still as death. A red spark that glimmered among the trees, alone indicated where the mill lay.
Leslie checked the speed of his horse, as the road plunged down into this obscurity, which he had no sooner penetrated, than he found his course arrested by two bands of horsemen, who wheeled round their ranks from each side of the road, barring their passage by their levelled lances and uplifted swords. Well was it for Leslie that his fiery horse made a demi-volte, giving him time both to escape their weapons and unsheath his own.
"Make ye way, sirs! I am on the king's service!" he exclaimed, still backing his horse, but disdaining to fly. "Plague! the sheriff of Fife has surely bad deputies! But, whoever you are, rascals, the life of Balquhan for the best life among ye!"
And dashing spurs into his horse, he broke through the whole band like a whirlwind, thrusting one through the body, bearing down another, unhorsing a third with his foot; and passing unhurt through the hedge of steel around him, left John of Clatto and his ruffians to deposit one of their own number in the grave they had dug so carefully in the thicket near the mill.
He heard behind a storm of oaths and outcries, mingled with the clash of arms, and the rush of galloping hoofs, as the horsemen broke tumultuously out of the wooded hollow, and poured along the highway, in fierce pursuit of him. Heedless of their taunts and shouts, Leslie spurred on: he had now been made aware that there were those upon the road whose interest it was to intercept him. On, on he went by the skirts of the desolate and moonlighted moss, and his anxiety was not lessened by the reflection that he had to pass by the Tower of Bandon, whose proprietor was his enemy; and in a few minutes he saw the square outline of this fortalice, with its angular turrets and grated windows, rising above the roadway, among a group of old ash-trees.
The pursuers were close behind.
Leslie was almost tempted to turn towards the moss; but to one so ignorant of its paths, such a measure might prove a certain death, while the risk was scarcely less in keeping near the barony of Bandon. Half-a-mile before him, on the open muirland, he saw several men on horseback, and his practised eye soon discovered that they were twelve in number, and armed, for the moonbeams were reflected from twelve helmets. Then his heart became filled with rage; for though he knew not why his path was thus beset, he knew that if he were slain, and the pardon was not delivered by a certain hour in Edinburgh, the unhappy Jane Seton, the promised bride of his friend, would assuredly be led forth to perish by a shameful and frightful death.
Many of the troop from which he had escaped, not less than twelve, perhaps, were scarcely a hundred yards behind him; now he saw as many more in front, and his forebodings told him they were the Lindesays of Bandon. At Balbirnie there stood an ancient cross, erected by a gentleman of the neighbourhood who had slain another at that place; and this cross (which is still standing) Leslie knew would afford him a sanctuary, if his pursuers were old Catholics; but he remembered that the Reformation had made vast progress in Fife, and that its proselytes would not hesitate to violate any sanctuary; so, instead of pressing onward to gain this bourne, supposing that the direct road might be beset still further on, he turned abruptly to the left, and plunged down a narrow strath, which led, as he was aware, towards the village of Markinch and the strong castle of the Lundies of Balgonie.
A shout burst from the horsemen on the muir, on finding that he thus avoided them; and, joining with those who came from Kirkforthar, they all urged their horses to the utmost speed to intercept the gallant messenger. Many a dague and petronel were fired after him, and he heard the balls, as they whistled sharply past his ear, crash among the branches of the wayside trees, or sink into the flinty road; but after some twenty or thirty shots, the firing ceased, as the troopers rode in such haste that they had not time to reload their firearms. On, on came horses and men at headlong speed, rushing, a troop of evil spirits, along the moon-lighted strath; now dashing through coppice and underwood, then splashing through a brawling mountain burn; now sweeping noiselessly over the yielding moss and heather muirland, and anon breasting gallantly up the pasture braes: but Leslie, being mounted on one of King James's best horses, fresh from its stall at Falkland, though he did not leave his pursuers altogether behind, was yet enabled to keep a considerable distance between them and himself.
And now, upon a little eminence, the village of Markinch, with its venerable square steeple of the eleventh century, arose before him, and near it he fortunately left almost the half of his pursuers, floundering up to their girths in the deep and dangerous marsh which encircled the village on every side save one. Here to halt was vain; for the unscrupulous Lairds of Clatto and Bandon had men enough to sack and destroy the whole kirk-hamlet; so forward pressed the fugitive, intent on reaching the castle of Balgonie, or the ancient mansion of the Beatons of Balfour, where the archbishop of St. Andrew's and his nephew, the great cardinal, were born. On, on yet! and he soon found himself among the woods of the Leven; dark and thick, old and stately, the beeches were in the full foliage of July, and the dense old Scottish firs intertwined their wiry branches with them: and now the river, broad, deep, and hoarse, in the full fury of its summer flood, swollen by a night of rain, lay rolling in foam before him; and upon its opposite bank rose, from a wooded eminence, the strong and lofty donjon tower of that time-honoured, but now extinct race, the brave old Lundies of Balgonie.
Glittering in the moonlight, like a silver torrent, the beautiful Leven swept out of the far and dark obscurity of its foliaged dell, and in its crystal depths (save where the foam-bells floated) the sombre outline of the castle, with its turrets, and the steep knowe on which it stood, with all its waving trees, were reflected in the deep and downward shadows.
There were not less than twenty mounted spearmen still upon his track, and, lo! a deep, fierce current lay foaming in his front. On a level sward, Leslie paused with irresolution, and before plunging into the stream, surveyed it, but surveyed in vain to find a ford.
He looked back. The hill he had descended was covered with whins and scattered trees; and there, far in advance of their comrades, came four horsemen, who were now close upon him. With a fervent, almost a ferocious prayer to Heaven, he drew his sword and awaited them, for at the first glance he discerned that one of the four was his enemy Bandon, who, to breathe his panting horse, advanced leisurely at a trot before his three immediate followers.
"Guid e'en to thee, my light-heeled Leslie," said he, with a sardonic grin; "thou hast gien us a fast ride and a far one!"
"Beware, Bandon; I ride this night on the king's service."
"I ken that well."
"And still thou darest to molest me?"
"Yea, would I, though ye rode on the errand of the king of hell instead of that of the King of Scotland. Have at thee—for thou art a Leslie of Balquhan!"
"Beware, I tell thee, beware! My life is not my own to-night," cried Leslie, guarding the impending stroke of Lindesay's uplifted sword; "beware thee, till to-morrow only. I am the bearer of a royal pardon to Edinburgh."
"To thy grave alone thou bearest it!" cried the other, furiously.
Leslie parried the blow, and then replying by a thrust at the throat of his antagonist, before withdrawing his sword, bestowed a backhanded stroke at another horseman, who had covered him with his brass petronel, a stroke which rendered his better arm useless. Another deadly thrust relieved him of a second enemy, and then he had but two to deal with.
Round and round him they both rode in circles, but by point and edge he met their cuts and thrusts; till observing that Bandon was close to the edge of the stream, he suddenly put spurs to his horse, and charging him with the utmost fury, by a blow of his foot forced him right over the bank, where his horse fell upon him, and with its rider sank into the river. There Lindesay became entangled beneath the animal, which snorted, kicked, and plunged so violently, that he was swept unresistingly away with the current and drowned. Next morning the miller of Balgonie, on finding his machinery stopped and the dam running over, was horrified to see a horse and its rider, in armour, lying drowned and jammed under the great wooden wheel of his mill.
A volley of petronels from the bank above Leslie left him no time for further defence or reflection; and with a shout of defiance he leaped his horse boldly into the stream, and, regardless of the bullets which plunged into the water incessantly, exerted every energy to gain the opposite bank, using his hands and knees, half swimming, to relieve the animal of his burden (which was not a light one, the rider being in armour): keeping its dilated nostrils above water, and yielding a little to the current, he ultimately crossed, successfully and securely.
With flattened ears and upraised head, the broad-chested steed breasted gallantly the foaming water, and snorted with satisfaction on feeling the firm ground at the opposite side, where Leslie uttered a shout of triumph as he scrambled up the bank, and thus by one bold effort found himself free.
Oaths and cries of rage resounded among the woods behind, and many a trooper urged his horse towards the brink, but their hearts failed them, and not one dared to cross the deep and rapid Leven, by which their intended victim had been saved and their leader swept away before their eyes. The lieutenant of the king's guard now leisurely examined the knees of his horse and the girths of his saddle; looked to his sword-belt and spur-leathers; recharged his petronels, and glanced at the pouch which contained the pardon of Jane Seton. He then wiped his sword and remounted.
Reflecting that the river was now between him and his enemies, that he was several miles out of the direct road, and that (except the ducking) he was not in the least the worse either of the ride or the combat, he resolved, instead of seeking shelter either at the place of Balfour or the castle of Balgonie, to push onwards to Kinghorn.
The ramparts of this stronghold, which are eighty feet in height, were glimmering in the moonbeams, above the tossing foliage, as he descended into the hollow which lies to the south of it, and then turned westward, little thinking that the ferocious Laird of Clatto, with Dobbie, Tam Trotter, and some fifteen horsemen, in anticipation of such a measure, had long before wheeled off to the right, and were pushing on the spur towards the Kinghorn road to intercept him.
"I prithee mark
His countenance; unlike bold calumny,
Which sometime dare not speak the thing it looks,
He dare not look the thing he speaks, but bends
His gaze on the blind earth."—The Cenci.
On the 19th of May, 1537, the bells of Edinburgh rang joyously. It was a day of loyalty and merriment such as never more may gladden Scotland's ancient capital.