Jane Seton; or, The King's Advocate: A Scottish Historical Romance
"Reeve a rope through his siller ear-rings and tow him overboard,"
cried one sailor.
"Cast off! cast off!" cried another; "I hae heard o' sic imps that
abide at Cape Non, and eat of ship-broken mariners."
The coxswain raised the iron-shod boat-hook.
"Hold!" exclaimed the herald, springing forward, but he was too late;
it descended like a thunderbolt on the round, woolly head of Sabrino,
and he disappeared like a stone in the deep fathomless abyss of the
creek. "Dolt!" added the herald, "I have pledged my word of honour
for his safety, and thou hast slain him."
"Heed it not, good fellow; I will owe thee a score of bonnet-pieces
for that," cried Sir James Hamilton, as he sprang up the steep
winding pathway that led towards the tower, while the oars dipt into
the water, and the boat shot out upon the river, whose waves were
dancing brightly in the glow of a cloudless morning.
Before this, the countess and Sybil, overcome by weariness, the grief
of the past night, and a total deprivation of sleep, bad fallen into
a deep slumber in a chamber of the tower above.
The worthy lady of Barncleugh was somewhat of a termagant, which was
generally averred to be the principal reason why the good laird her
spouse had solicited from the cardinal, and retained, the solitary
castellany of Inchkeith. The lady never came into the island, and
the laird never went out of it; but consumed the long and dreary
days, revelling in the peaceful monotony he now enjoyed, playing
chess with his seneschal, and drinking usquebaugh mixed with a small
proportion of the brackish spring-water of the isle. A table was
placed near the gate of the tower, at a sunny angle of the barbican,
on the very verge of those cliffs named the Climpers; and there, with
the sea rolling nearly a hundred and eighty feet below, the seagulls
and the Solan geese croaking above them, they passed the summer
afternoons, playing chess and drinking, with invincible resolution
and impenetrable gravity, till sunset, when the knight was usually
borne upstairs and put to bed, the damp air having stiffened his
limbs, as he always declared next day--an assertion which the
seneschal (who had his own thoughts on the matter) never dared to
deny.
It may easily be supposed that such a castellan was in no way
calculated to relieve the tedium, soothe the grief and mortification,
or lessen the fears, of the countess and Sybil; for days rolled on
and became weeks, and weeks were approaching a month; and though the
opposite coast and the city, the scene of all their anxieties, were
little more than three miles distant, they remained in total and
blessed ignorance of all that was passing there.
They seemed to be as utterly forgotten as if they had been in the
_oubliettes_ of the cardinal.
The countess heard nothing of her daughter, whom she had fully
expected to join her; and Sybil learned nothing of her lover; so
whether, with the Douglas faction, he was bearing all before him at
sword's point, and waging a victorious though rebellious war with the
king and court; or whether they had returned to exile at the capital
of England, they knew not. The total absence of all intelligence
made them conclude the latter, and that he had taken Lady Jane with
him to protect her. Then the countess would weep bitterly at the
thought of such a separation; for England was then a hostile country;
and places that are now but a day's journey distant were then deemed
afar off and difficult of access. A chain of royal castles watched
the English from the south, and the cannon of Berwick and Carlisle,
Norham and Newcastle, frowned towards the Scottish mountains on the
north. Safe conducts and passports were constantly required on both
sides of the frontier, the jealous Scot and his aggressive neighbour
seldom saw each other, save under the peaks of their helmets; and an
exchange of cannon-balls and sword-cuts was the only traffic in which
they were permitted to deal. Though we can smile at such a state of
matters between the two kingdoms, experience is daily showing that
Scotland will soon require some _firmer guarantee_ for her national
privileges than a British parliament can afford her, against the
march of centralization.
A little rocky island, half a mile in length by the eighth of a mile
in breadth, could afford but few amusements. Sybil soon tired of
watching the white seagulls and the gigantic Solan geese that floated
about the Longcraig, in the fissures of which the waves were ever
roaring with a sound of thunder. She tired too of watching the
passing ships, the Holland wachters, the Flemish crayers, the
Rochellers and Dunkirkers, with their high poops and great square
banners: the large brown lug-sails of the boats which then fished
between the island and the town of Kinghorn, and of hearkening to the
hum of that song which the fishers of the Forth yet chant to their
oars, the end of each monotonous verse being--
"The leal gudeman of Aberdour,
Sits in Sir Alan Vipont's tower."
She tired of watching the endless waves as they rolled on the rocky
beach, marking every tenth billow as the largest and most forcible, a
phenomenon known since the days of Ovid; and Sybil sighed for the
city, whose lofty castle and ridgy outline "piled deep and massy,
close and high," she saw daily shining afar off in the summer sun.
More content--for the wants, the wishes, and the hopes of age are
generally few--the countess wiled away the time in the perusal of her
missal, and searching for the four-leaved clover which she found
sometimes in the little valley, and solemnly pulled, saying, after
the old Scottish fashion, "In nomine Patris, Filii, et Spiritus
Sancti," to be preserved and worn as a charm against the _evil eye_,
which she thought was observable in Sir James Hamilton of Barncleugh.
"Sybil, my bairn," she frequently whispered, when the besotted
castellan was dosing over his wine and chessboard, "he hath indeed a
most evil eye, and whatever he looks upon cannot thrive; so keep all
thy blessed relics and consecrated medals about thee. Beware," she
would add, smoothing the jet-like ringlets, and kissing the cheek of
Sybil, which exhibited that peculiar olive tint of the brave old
Douglas race, which is so much richer than the most roseate hue;
"beware thee, too, of approaching yonder end of the valley, for I
fear me mickle the _gude-wichts_ dwell among the rocks;" and in
confirmation she pointed to those bright sparry particles which
frequently stud basaltic masses, and in Scotland are denominated
fairy pennies. "More than once after nightfall, when sitting at my
dreary chamber window in yonder tower, I have heard melodious sounds,
and seen strange gleams of light emitted from yonder brae. I
remember that my worthy father, Sir Archibald (quhom God assoilzie),
once showed me a knowe near unto the duletree that grew beneath sur
Castell o' Kilspindie, the stones whereof were studded with these
sparry marks, and therein dwelt the gude-wichts in such numbers as ye
will find the sand on the sea-shore. Quite gude neighbours they
were, but wrathful and dangerous to molest. It happened in the year
1501, as he rode thereby, in full harness with his visor up, and the
red heart fluttering on his pennon behind him--lo! the whole hillock
was seemingly raised, and stood on twelve pillars, each about four
feet high; and below he saw crowds of wee men and wee women all
dressed in grass green, wi' foxglove and blue-bells on their heads.
Thousands were dancing to the hum o' fairy harps and drums, while
thousands more were airing heaps of gold, and pushing to and fro
great chests full of shining coins. Sorely amazed at this sight, his
hair bristled up below his helmet, but he bethought him of the patron
of our house.
"'Sancta Brigida, ora pro me!' said he (being all the Latin he had
ever picked up from Father St. Bernard), when down sank the hill, its
grassy side became dark, for light and sound and fairies vanished;
and then the gude knight, my father, thought it no shame on his
manhood to gallop swiftly away. Ah, me! this was in the time of King
James IV., of gallant memorie!"
Brighter and sunnier June came on; but such and so close were the
measures of the cardinal, and his able second, the king's advocate,
that no tidings reached that lonely little isle of the events which
were taking place so near it.
CHAPTER XXI.
JOHN OF THE SILVERMILLS.
"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