Jane Seton; or, The King's Advocate: A Scottish Historical Romance
"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!"
CHAPTER XXII.
TEN RED GRAINS.
"Yes! in an hour like this, 'twere vain to hide
The heart so long and so severely tried:
Still to thy name that heart hath fondly thrilled,
But sterner duties called and were fulfilled."
MRS. HEMANS.
Prior to his departure for Balmerino, and immediately on his leaving
the palace, the learned apothegar visited the king's advocate.
The town house of Sir Adam Otterburn, the Redhall Lodging, as it was
named and as we have before stated, stood upon the south side of the
Canongate, and near to the eastern end thereof.
At the present day the south side of this venerable street, the
memories of which go back to the days of St. David I., and the
glories of Earl Randolph and Ramsay of Dalhousie, is still somewhat
straggling, irregular, and open; in 1537 it was much more so. The
houses were then detached, surrounded by gardens, and even parks; for
there were several barnyards in the Canongate, some of which were
destroyed by cannonading during the siege of 1573.
The severe plagues of 1514 and 1520, which followed the slaughter of
Flodden, swept away many of the citizens, whose houses were
demolished to remove all chance of lingering infection; thus the
mansion of Redhall was remarkably solitary. A ruined and desolate
barn-yard lay to the westward; and a grass park, shaded by many
beautiful sycamores, extended on the east nearly to the foot of the
alley known as the Horsewynd.
It was a strong square five-storied house, with walls of enormous
thickness; its crow-stepped gable and one vast chimney studded with
oyster-shells faced the street; at each corner was a square corbelled
turret, from the tops of which, in wet weather, two stone spouts
disgorged the rain-water without mercy on the passengers. To the
street, the windows were few, small, and, according to the Scottish
custom, secured with rusty iron gratings. The first and second
stories were vaulted with solid stone, and stone slabs covered the
roof. Externally the edifice was destitute of ornament; but, strong
as rock, it would have withstood a salvo of cannon-balls; and was one
of the most perfect specimens of the old Scottish house existing,
before the introduction of the more florid French style. Studded
with iron, the small door was deeply recessed in the wall, and
protected by four loopholes, splayed without and within, to admit of
a wide range for arrows or arquebuses; while it was further secured
by a tranverse beam of oak, which superseded all necessity for locks
or bolts.
A fortnight had now elapsed since the night on which the earl and his
sister had been carried off; yet in all that time Redhall had been
totally incapable of prosecuting his schemes either of love or
vengeance; for that _fortunate_ sword-thrust which he had received
from the hand of Vipont, together with the fever produced by his own
furious and boiling passions, had bound him down to a sick bed, from
which, however, by the care or quackery of the learned John of
Silvermills, he was now fast recovering.
Pale, careworn, and feverish in aspect, a day in the beginning of
June saw him again seated at his writing-table, immersed in his
masses of correspondence, his mysterious portfolios, which were full
of strange memorandums in ciphers and Latin contractions, which none
could read, save himself and the cardinal. His trusty rascal,
Birrel, who was always at hand, and ready for everything, from
cleaning his master's boots to cleaving his enemies' heads with a
Jethart staff, was in attendance as usual, when our acquaintance of
the preceding chapter was announced, and Birrel, starting from Sir
Adam's chair, where he had been in close confab, drew back the arras.
"God save you, Sir Adam Otterburn," said the learned John, stroking
his long beard according to his invariable custom; "how--again at thy
pen, despite mine earnest injunction?"
"Business of the State--fiend take it! I must attend now, for a
mountain of matter hath accumulated here."
"Ah," said the physician, setting down his sand-glass and fixing his
keen eyes thereon, while his bony fingers were applied to the pulse
of Redhall's left hand--"Ah! thy pulse is very irregular--thy nerves
are burning. Now, nothing affects the nerves so much as intense
thought, and by thine eyes I see thou hast been thinking intensely.
By this, the vital motions are hurt, the functions disordered, the
whole frame unhinged. Thou must continue to take my potion night and
morning."
"What! more of thy diabolical drench?"
"How, Sir Adam! Dost thou so defame my prescription, which I have
compounded from the identical recipe left by that worshipful clerk,
John of Gaddesden, the worthy author of the 'Rosa Anglica,' the
possessor of that valuable necklace which when drawn tight cured all
manner of fits."
"Ah, my friend, Sanders Screw hath another which doth the very same."
"Indeed! thou amazest me," said the physician, resting his bearded
chin on his staff. "John of Gaddesden's collar was an anodyne
necklace, and had the word _abracadabra_ written thereon."
"But the collar of Carle Sanders is only a stout cord," said the
advocate, with a sardonic grin.
"I blush, Sir Adam, that thou shouldst name this vile worm in the