Jane Seton; or, The King's Advocate: A Scottish Historical Romance
"Ah," said Redhall, with a smile, "Birrel soon found such proofs
against him, that he is sent to the justiciary court."
"Ho! ho!" said the little abbot, rubbing his hands; "Sanders Screw
and his concurrents will bring mickle to light, or my name is not
Robin----"
But here the advocate hurried abruptly away, for at that moment the
dance ended; and flushed, heated, and fatigued, the two ladies were
led away--De Montreuil, by her cavalier, into the adjoining
apartment, and Lady Jane towards a staircase which descended from the
hall to the level and grassy lawn, that lay between the palace and
the foot of the craigs of Salisbury.
The green sides of the silent hills and rocky brows of those basaltic
cliffs, which seem but the half of some vast mountain which volcanic
throes have rent and torn asunder, were bathed in the splendour of
the broad and cloudless moon; the palace towers and vanes stood forth
in strong white light, while the curtain walls and cloistered courts
were steeped in sable shadow. On the right were a cluster of small
antique houses where some of the royal retainers dwelt, and where
Roland had his temporary domicile. This was called St. Anne's Yard;
on the left, apparently among the hills, two red lights were shining.
One was from an ancient mansion at the foot of Salisbury craigs,
where Robert, abbot of the Holy Cross, dwelt; the other was from the
illuminated shrine of St. Antony's Hermitage.
Several revellers were lounging on the green sward in the moonlight,
or sitting on the carved stone benches that were placed against the
palace wall, and the lovers took possession of the most remote, where
the south garden of the king bordered the burial-ground of the abbey.
"Jane," said Roland, as he gazed fondly on her pure brow and snowy
skin, which seemed so dazzlingly white in the clear moonlight; "your
smiles to-night have done more to raise the Douglas cause than twenty
thousand lances. How my heart leaps! I seem to tread on air! I
knew well that James had but to see you, to appreciate your worth and
beauty. He has done so; and now old dame Margaret of Arran, and all
the Hamiltons of Cadyow and Clydesdale, will be ready to burst their
boddices and die of sheer vexation."
"But if Archibald should be discovered----"
"Chut! dost think that James would dance with the sister over-night
and decapitate the brother in the morning?"
"The king never once referred to the frightful position in which he
is placed."
"He is much too courtly to do so. But say, art thou not happy,
dearest?"
"Happy? with a proclamation on this palace-gate offering a thousand
merks for my brother's head! Oh, Roland, Roland! I would justly
merit contempt to be so. I came not hither to rejoice, or with any
other intention than to beg his life and pardon from the king. The
figures of a dance were certainly not the place to prefer such a
solemn request--Mother of God! no; and, as my mother says, but with a
different meaning, I am yet biding my time. My heart sickens at the
splendour of that glittering hall, when I bethink me that the gallant
earl, my brother, whose plume should have waved among the loftiest
there, is now the companion of lacqueys and liverymen--the retainers
of our actual enemies and oppressors--the butt, perhaps, of their
coarse mirth and ribald jests, and fearing to repel them with the
spirit he possesses, lest he should be discovered and unmasked by
those whose innate hatred of the Seton and the Douglas require not
the additional incentive of King James's gold."
"It was, I own, a madcap adventure, his coming here to-night; but
thou knowest that he is headstrong as a Highland bull. However,
Lintstock, my servant, a wary old gunner of King James IV., is with
him, and will see he is neither insulted nor discovered."
"Anything is better than suspense," said Jane, sobbing. "Would that
the king were here."
"I will bring him if you wish it," said Roland, rising and taking
both her hands in his; "he would come in a moment, for to him a
lady's message is paramount to one from the parliament. But would
you say that the earl is in Scotland--here among us in Edinburgh?"
"I would, Roland--yes, for such is my confidence in the honour and
generosity of the king."
"'Tis not misplaced, for James is alike good and merciful; but 'twere
better to ask his French bride, whom he loves too well to refuse her
anything--even to become the ally of his uncle, English Henry; and
certes! the pardon of a gallant Scottish noble is no great boon to
crave of a generous Scottish king."
Roland started, for at that moment the voice of James was heard at
one of the open windows of the hall just above them.
"Vipont! Sir Roland Vipont!" he said.
"I am here, at your grace's service," replied Sir Roland, raising his
bonnet.
"Wilt thon favour us a moment? here, my lord the bishop of Limoges
and I have a dispute as to whether our old gun of Galloway, Mollance
Meg, or the Devil of Bois le Duc, carry the largest ball. I say Meg;
the bishop says the Devil; and as 'tis thy office to know all points
of gunner-craft, come hither, if that fair dame will do us the honour
to spare thee for one moment, for we have laid a hundred lions Scots
on the matter."
Loth to leave Jane, and anxious to please the king, Roland hesitated,
till she said--
"Obey the king, and I will wait your return; luckily, yonder is my
cousin Sybil and Louis Leslie of the king's guard."
Roland pressed her hand, sprang up the flight of steps, and the
moment he was gone Lady Jane found some one standing at her side.
She turned, and encountered the sombre figure of Redhall, the sad
glance of whose piercing eyes ran like lightning through her veins;
and she trembled at the double reflection that she was almost alone,
and that he might have overheard their dangerous conversation
concerning her brother.
CHAPTER X.
LOVE AND ABHORRENCE.
"Ah! who can e'er forget so fair a being?
Who can forget her half retiring sweets?
God! she is like a milk-white lamb that bleats
For man's protection."
When Jane thought for a moment of how long this great political
inquisitor and public prosecutor had been the feudal foe and legal
oppressor of her mother's kinsman and her father's house, and that he
had but recently (as she had gathered from her brother) meditated or
attempted the assassination of her lover,--as he had previously done
the chief of the Maclellans,--she felt her whole heart recoil from
him as from a serpent, with terror and abhorrence. Nevertheless,
finding that Sybil and her cavalier had disappeared among the groups
of revellers who dotted the moonlit lawn, she had sufficient tact to
veil her inward repugnance and suspicions under an outward
politeness, and to incline her head slightly when he bowed and
assumed a position for conversing by leaning his handsome and stately
figure against the stone arm of the sofa, which was formed of a
wyvern with its wings outspread.
He was dazzled by the splendour of her beauty, which the unwonted
magnificence of her attire had so much enhanced; and remained silent
and embarrassed, till Jane said--
"I did not imagine that so grave a man as Sir Adam Otterburn would
have much to amuse him among these gay frivolities."
"Nor have I, madam, for my mind is usually filled with thoughts of
deeper and more vital import than the comely fashion of a ruff or
mantle, or the curling of a pretty ringlet. I came but to steal a
few moments from my unhappy destiny; and I swear by my faith, that to
see you dancing with the king was the only tranquil joy I have had
for many a day. Ah! madame, you excelled yourself; you outshone them
all, as yonder moon outshines the stars around it!"
Lady Jane bowed again, and glanced uneasily at the staircase; there
was no appearance of Roland, and knowing intuitively the dangerous
topic to which the speaker was inclining, she trembled for what he
might say next, for Redhall was not a man to dally much when he had
any end in view.
He had seen her dancing with Roland Vipont; he had heard those
whispers by which the whole court linked their names together as
lovers, yet an incontrollable folly or fatality led him blindly on.
"Notwithstanding that we were such good friends when last we met,"
said he, in his soft and flute-like voice, while bending his fine
dark eyes on the green sward, "you have shunned me so much of late,
Lady Jane, that I have had no opportunity of begging your permission
to renew that conversation in which I presumed first to
say--that--that----"
"What?----"
"That I loved you"--his voice sank to a whisper at the abruptness of
the declaration.
"Oh! Sir Adam; thou followest a phantom."
Redhall sighed sadly and bitterly.
"There was a time, dearest madam, when I did not think so," he
continued slowly and earnestly--"a time when I almost flattered
myself that you loved me in return."
"I!" said Jane, faintly.
"_Thou_," he replied, impressively, fixing upon her his piercing eyes
with an expression which fascinated her. "It was in the garden of my
lord the abbot of Holyrood, at his mansion near yonder craigs, some
nine or ten months ago, about the vesper time; it was a glorious
evening, and a broad yellow harvest-moon was shining in the blue
heavens, among golden-coloured clouds; the air was pure, and laden
with perfume and with the fragrance of yonder orchards, and these
fields covered with the grain of a ripe harvest. Abbot Robert had
given a supper to Henrico Godscallo, the ambassador who came to offer
as a bride Mary of Austria or Mary of Portugal to King James. Oh!
thou canst not have forgotten it. We walked together in the garden,
and you did me the honour to lean upon my arm. I bent my head
towards you, and your beautiful hair touched my forehead. My heart
beat like lightning--every vein trembled! Oh! I have never
forgotten that night--that hour--the place--the time! You seemed
good and kind, merry and gentle with me. I was on the point of
declaring myself then--of saying how I loved you--how I worshipped
you; and your charming embarrassment seemed to expect the avowal;
when the countess's page--yonder black devil with the rings in his
ears--approached, and the spell was broken. My God! the same moment,
the same soft influences and adorable opportunity have never come
again!"
"My lord advocate, you can plead ably for yourself," replied Jane,
coldly.
"My soul is in the cause at issue," said he, looking at her
anxiously; "'tis very true, I am very miserable. I am as one in a
dream. I love the air she breathes--the ground she treads on." He
was speaking to himself. In the very depth of his thoughts he forgot
that she was beside him.
"My lord, my lord, 'tis the rhapsody, this, of Sir David Lindesay, or
some such balladier."
"Nay, nay; oh! do not mock me. It seemeth as if my love for you is
not the common love of this cold and utilitarian world; for if ten
ages rolled over our heads, I feel sure that my love would be the
same; nor time, nor circumstance, not even despair, can overcome it.
Oh! lady, believe me, there is no other man loves thee as I do."
Jane thought of Roland, but either the fury or the profundity of the
speaker's passion awed her into silence, for she made no reply; and
thereby encouraged, he continued--
"Pride and ambition are strong within me; but, believe me, my breast
never had a passion so deep, so pure, as my love for thee. There is
a silent strength in it that grows out of its very hopelessness.
Canst thou conceive this? Every glance, and smile, and word of thine
I have treasured up for years, and in solitude I gloat over them,
even as a miser would over his gold and silver."
Covered with confusion, and trembling excessively, Jane made an