Jane Seton; or, The King's Advocate: A Scottish Historical Romance
letters M.B., for Magdalene Bourbon. My lords and gentlemen, can
other proof be wanting?"
Here he held up to view, between a pair of small iron tongs, a little
wooden figure, about eight inches long, having on its head a crown.
"Mother of God!" muttered the people, crossing themselves with horror
at these accumulated proofs.
"That death may be produced by wasting images, I could adduce a
thousand instances; but less will suffice. In the year 980, our own
King Duff, who pined under a grievous illness in Murrayshire, was
rescued from death when the witch was burned and her images broken.
The severe illness of Charles VI. of France was caused by sorcery,
and the witch was burnt; so was another, who, in conjunction with the
devil, forged a deed in favour of Robert of Artois. The powers of
inflicting and of allaying diseases were peculiar to sorcerers; the
mother allayed--the daughter inflicted. Solomon could allay disease
by incantations, and Phyrrus, king of Epirus, did so by one touch of
his great toe. Magic water may have been thrown on the queen's
person; for we know that a few drops from Chosopis, the enchanted
river of the Persians, brought death to all on whom they fell. As
the fire scorched and wasted this image, even so did the poor queen
waste and sink. Observe, my lords, it is formed of _pine_."
"The pine was consecrated, by the heathens of old, to Pluto, King of
Demons," said Lord Auldhame.
"And wherever the unhappy queen endured the most severe pains,--in
her head, in her heart, or the region of the stomach, there we find
the greatest number of torturing pins. There are seven in each eye,
and, like three, seven is a mystical number. I have but one remark
more, my lords. This image was originally that of one of the three
kings of Cologne; it has been abstracted from the rood screen of St.
Giles's, and made to serve for that of her umquhile majesty Queen
Magdalene."
"Sacrilege! sacrilege!" cried the crowd of listeners; "blasphemy and
heresy!----"
"All of which assuredly require the most severe penalty your
lordships can inflict--death at the stake!" and as the lord advocate
sat down, pale and exhausted by his long harangue, and by the wild
misanthropy of his desperate soul, the horror waxed strong in the
hearts of his hearers.
"Holy Mary!" exclaimed the lord president, raising his hands and eyes
to the oak ceiling, "can this woman, this being abandoned of God and
of man, be a daughter of that gallant race, every chief of which has
bled for Scotland and its king? Oh, what a wondrous--what a vast
amount of sin is here!"
Master Robert Galbraith and Master Henry Spittal, the most able of
the ten advocates, spoke in the defence of the accused long and ably,
but all their arguments were overborne by the sophistry and eloquence
of Redhall, and by the cloud of witnesses for the prosecution, which
proceeded with such rapidity, that they were soon silenced, and sat
down completely baffled. Then a long and anxious pause succeeded.
Father St. Bernard was in despair.
A senator now spoke; he was the rector of Ashkirk.
"My lords," said he, "in all that I have this day heard, there is
much that perplexes me sorely; for it seemeth that the same faculties
which were _miracles_ when exercised by the saints, we style
_sorceries_ when assumed by others. St. Servan of Lochleven
converted water into wine, and from the bosom of the arid earth a
fountain sprang at the voice of St. Patrick. St. Baldred of the Bass
used as a boat that rock which we may still see fixed in the sea near
his island; the wooden altar of St. Bryde of Douglas sprouted and put
forth leaves at her holy touch; the robe of St. Colme procured rain
in Iona; and, in the winter time, St. Blaise could strike fire with
his fingers----"
Here a stern glance from the Abbot Mylne cut him short, and he paused.
"The blessed saints of whom thou speakest, my lord, wrought those
wonders by the aid of Heaven alone, and not by the agency of a black
spirit. Of late, the devil hath frequently appeared at the
preachings of the Reformers as a black cat, and why may he not appear
elsewhere as a black boy?" said the president.
"True, most reverend and learned lord," rejoined the meagre little
abbot of Kinloss, "need I remind your lordships how my predecessor,
Abbot Ralph, now in company of the saints, when holding a chapter of
the Cistercians at Kinloss, A.D. 1214, beheld the devil, yea, as
surely as my name is Robin Reid, beheld him, in the shape of an
Ethiopian, enter by a window; but, on being exorcised in good Latin,
he vanished in smoke."*
* See John de Fordun's "Scotichronicon."
"True, true," continued Redhall, incoherently; "and by a devilishly
devised compact with this familiar, she assigned her soul to Satan
for the powers given----"
"Proof?" said the doubting rector of Ashkirk; "where is this
contract?"
"In the archives of hell--therefore, how can we produce it?"
The judge sat down silenced, and a cold smile flitted over the face
of Redhall, whose usually impassible front the Cumæan sybil herself
could not have read; but he looked anxiously at the abbot of
Cambuskenneth.
"Would that I knew what is passing in thy bald head, thou shaven
dotard!" thought he.
"Familiar spirits are usually black," said the president; "the vile
imposter, Mahomet, had one in the shape of a black cock, which, when
it crew, set all the cocks in the world crowing; and the Lord Hugh of
Zester had a black demon named _Gudeshovel_, who dug for him his
goblin hall beneath the surface of the earth. The unhappy prisoner
having persisted in denying her guilt, I require a slight application
of the torture, and an examination for the devil's mark, that the
ends of justice may be duly satisfied."
Redhall, who had been but half prepared for this, felt his heart die
within him, and he made a convulsive start.
"The torture! the torture! Oh, rather let me die! Holy abbot--my
lords--I ask you not for pardon, because I am innocent. I think not
of vengeance, because I am a woman--and though an earl's daughter and
an earl's sistar, a poor and helpless one--but I implore death,
because ye have dishonoured me by these accusations and by these
bonds--cruelly and falsely dishonoured me. Put me to death, but not
to the torture; for oh, I am weak, very weak, and will tell you
anything. Let me die! let me die! Oh, save me, Sir Adam
Otterburn--oh yes, everything--thou who hast done it all, save me
from these frightful men!"
As Birrel and Sanders Screw approached the shrinking girl, with their
stolid visages and huge hands, though half suffocated by sobs, she
gave a low, wild cry of agony and horror, and closing her eyes,
became perfectly passive. The judges looked on unmoved; a thrill
pervaded the hearts of the people, and Redhall felt the perspiration
trickle over his brow, though his blood ran cold through his veins.
"Oh, Roland, Roland! my love! my love! I am dying now," said Jane,
in a low voice (that was heard by Redhall alone), as she was lifted
from her seat.
Redhall's momentary pity died; he sat down with one of his freezing
smiles--such smiles as can only be given by one who has alike
outlived the hopes of his heart and the feelings of humanity.
"_The torture,_" repeated the lord president.
Redhall dipped his pen mechanically in the inkstand, and Dobbie
uncovered the rack; then, as every man respired more freely, a low,
but unintentional hiss seemed to pervade the hall.
CHAPTER XXXVI.
THE RACK--THE DEVIL'S MARK.
"If on the rack you strain our bursting sinews;
If from the bleeding trunk you lop our limbs;
Or with slow fires protract the hours of pain,
We must abide it all."--_Boadicea_.
As yet neither the boot nor thumb screws had been adopted by the
Scottish courts; the ancient rack alone was the instrument of
torture, and now it stood before the eyes of the startled people in
all its naked and mysterious horror. Though totally repugnant to the
fundamental laws of Scotland, which are based on those of Rome, the
practice of obtaining confessions by torture in the Privy Council and
High Court of Justiciary was not discontinued until a hundred and
sixty years after the date of our history, in the reign of William
III., who, whatever he was in South Britain, will ever be remembered
in the north as one who was merciless as a Mohawk.
The rack, which Dobbie had uncovered, was a large frame of oak,
raised three feet from the floor, like a long, narrow bed without
spars, but having two rings at the head and two at the foot. The
aspect of this engine, with all its accompanying blocks, pulleys,
chains, and handspikes in the sockets of the windlass, froze Father
St. Bernard with horror. He crossed himself, beat his breast, and
closed his eyes.
Old and withered, with a long beard and a hollow-jawed sardonic
visage, with leering eyes, a fangless mouth, and bandy legs, Sanders
Screw, the torturer and headsman--the presiding genius over this
infernal machine--looked like an overgrown imp, as, with his
concurrents, he hurried agilely from ring to ring, and from rope to
rope, putting the whole in working order.
"_Agnus Dei!_" muttered the old priest, who, in a little volume which
he wrote, has transmitted an account of these things to us; "all this
for one frail body! May Heaven make it without feeling, even as the
hearts of those around us."
Powerless and unresisting, Jane was borne between Sanders Screw and
Nichol Birrel towards the rack, and placed within its frame. Birrel
remembered Roland Vipont and Douglasdale; and, trembling with joy and
revenge, made himself more than usually active. The costume of Screw
and his two concurrents had something strikingly horrible in it;
their doublets were scarlet--the judicial colour in Scotland--but
their brawny arms were bared to the elbow; and they wore dirty
leather aprons, extending from their necks to their knees. Lady
Jane's garments swept the floor, and her long hair, which became
unbound as her triangular cap fell off, floated over the shoulder of
Screw as he adjusted her in the frame. Then a shudder came over her
as the rings and cords were secured to her ankles and wrists, her
beautiful arms being extended at full length above her head,
revealing the exquisite rounding of her bust and waist. The whole
arrangement did not occupy a moment.
While in this frightful and humiliating position, with her head
supported in the hands of Screw's apprentice, and her blue silk skirt
drooping on the floor, Redhall dared not look towards her, but sat
down beside the rack, and bent his bloodshot eyes upon the blank
sheet of paper, whereon the coming confession was to be written. He
trembled excessively. On the other side was the physician, who
attended all such _questioning_--John of the Silvermills--clad in
deep mourning, like all the courtiers and dependents of the king,
with a white St Andrew's cross on his black velvet mantle, and having
a large pouch at his girdle, wherein were various revivifying drugs
and essences.
Gently, but unceremoniously, the greater part of Jane's attire had
been loosened by the rapid application of a pair of scissors.
"Now then, the devil's mark," said the lord president, shading his
eyes with his hand, and peering forward over his desk.
Nichol Birrel, sworn pricker of the High Court, now approached with
his needle, and ruthlessly uncovered the whole neck, shoulders, and
bosom of the unhappy girl. Her skin was dazzlingly white, and shone
like polished ivory in the sunlight which streamed through the deep
mullions of the windows above her in many hazy flakes.
"Oh!" she murmured, and shuddered, while the hot, bitter tears were
seen to ooze from her closed eyelids. An icy sweat burst over