Jane Seton; or, The King's Advocate: A Scottish Historical Romance
"Nay--no John Dargavel, but a reputable officer of court," said the
president, who felt some compassion for the agony expressed in the
young man's face.
"A villain, who excited the lieges to rebellion in Douglasdale, and
to a resistance of the royal standard, which occasioned me the
killing and wounding of a dozen brave soldiers."
"We have had enough of this," said the president, impatiently; "the
poor youth is so blind with passion, that he would not know a hawk
from the heronshaw. Break up the court. Away, sir! torture hath
been applied, and the ends of justice are satisfied."
"Torture--justice!" reiterated Roland, in a voice like a shriek, and
looking with terror at Jane, who stretched her feeble arms
imploringly towards him. "Lord, Lord, look down upon me, and
preserve my senses. Oh, have ye dared---- Cowards and slaves! is it
justice by rack and torture to wrench confession from the lips of a
poor and helpless woman? Smooth-fronted villains, is there not one
among ye who will dare to take up my gage? Sir William of Balwearie,
Sir John of Lundie, Sir Adam Otterburn of Auldhame, do you hear me?"
Not one of the seven lay senators moved.
"Truly, thou art either a madman or a hero!" said the old president,
gazing on the armed knight with admiration; "but doom hath been
pronounced, and the sorceress must die!"
"_Die!_" repeated Roland, with a fierce smile. "And coldly thou
sayest this? Oh, lord abbot! dastard judge! dost forget that thou
growest old, and a day cometh when thou too shalt die, and be called
to account for this misused authority. Art thou a god to create,
that thou darest thus coolly to destroy; not like a gallant soldier
in the heat of battle--but coldly, calmly, and without anger? But I
see it all now; and though this moment be my last, I will avenge Jane
Seton on Redhall--the angel on the demon! See how the pale coward is
before the brave man! Art thou blanched, Sir Adam, with fear, with
fasting, or remorse? Wretch and villain! who makest use of the laws
to cloak thine own infamous projects of lust, ambition, and revenge;
thus in face of thy deluded compeers, the just God gives thee over to
me--at last--at last I have thee!"
And rushing upon the lord advocate with his long sword drawn back for
a deadly thrust, he had infallibly run him through the body, had not
two of the provost's guard resolutely interposed their halberts, the
heads of which he hewed off by one blow.
"Oh, the fule!" said the host of the _Cross and Gillstoup_, who was
among the crowd. "My thirty crowns! I may whistle on my thumb for
them noo!"
A cry of mingled fear and admiration arose from the people; it
drowned poor Jane's far wilder one of terror: and she made frantic
efforts to free herself from the arquebusiers, and to succour or die
with her brave lover, who, on being pinned against the wall with more
than twenty long pikes, was soon beaten down, pinioned and disarmed.
As he fell, Jane thought they had killed him, and uttered a cry of
despair; all her energies, so briefly recovered, immediately forsook
her; the light left her eyes; her heart forgot to beat. She became
perfectly insensible, and was re-conveyed to the Castle of Edinburgh
in a litter, under the care of Father St. Bernard and John the
physician.
"It matters not, this poor victory!" said Roland, with a bitter
smile; "it matters not, Redhall. I will unmask thee yet, thou subtle
villain, and show our too-credulous king the true aspect of the viper
he has nourished so long."
"Guards! away with him--to ward!" cried the advocate, furiously, as
he signed a hastily-written warrant: and in one hour from that time
Roland found himself committed to the care of Sir James Riddel of
Cranstoun-Riddel, on a charge of high treason, and attempting to
murder in open court Sir Adam Otterburn of Redhall.
The excitement in the city was great.
The whole garrison of Sir James stood to their arms, and buckled on
their harness; the brass culverins of the Spur were loaded; the gates
were closed, and bridges drawn up; while a crowd composed of
thousands covered the south and north sides of the Castle-hill up
even unto the very ramparts of the hornwork, nor dispersed until long
after the lingering sun of July had set behind the hills of Dunblane.
CHAPTER XXXVIII.
THE EARL'S DARING.
Dione, then: Thy wrongs with patience bear;
And share those griefs inferior powers must share;
Unnumbered woes mankind from us sustain,
And men with woes afflict the gods again."
_The Iliad_, Book V.
A few chapters back we left the Earl of Ashkirk alone upon the
solitary beach near the cavern, on the morning of that day which
beheld his unhappy sister for the first time an inmate of the Castle
of Edinburgh.
His more bitter feelings of hostility to James had been soothed, for
the monarch possessed the charm of the Stuart race--that charm which
won the hearts of all whom they addressed; but, being still
unforgiven, Lord Ashkirk felt himself an outlaw, with the axe of the
doomster hanging over his head, while he had to suspect a spy or a
foeman in every man he met.
With his eyes fixed on the island castle where his mother and Sybil
Douglas of Kilspindie were imprisoned,--with all his thoughts centred
there, and bent on visiting and freeing them from the thraldom and
captivity of a Hamilton, he walked along the sandy shore, revolving a
thousand rash but gallant plans and projects.
He was buried in deep thought, and gradually his head sank upon his
breast.
A draught of water from a spring, a bannock and a piece of cheese
received at a cottage where he tarried, and, in the hospitable
fashion of the olden time, asked for it without shame and obtained it
with a welcome, sufficed him for food; and, retracing his steps, he
wandered westward up the margin of the broad river, until he reached
the little kirktown of Wester-Kinghorn (which now bears another
name), lying behind the Burnt-island, nestling under the brow of
hills that are upheld by basaltic columns, whose summits have been
scorched by volcanic fire, and whose rifted sides have repelled the
waves of the antediluvian world.
On the high and rocky island, which, though it has now become a
promontory, was then completely surrounded by the sea at high water,
stood a tower belonging to the Duries of Durie.
Crossing the sandy neck or isthmus while the tide was low, the earl
concealed himself among the copsewood which covered the island on the
eastward, from whence he had a view of Inchkeith, distant about three
miles, reddened by the setting sun which covered with a golden tint
the calm, broad waters of the Firth.*
* Firth, from _Fiord_; not _Frith_, from _Fretum_, as Dr. Johnson
erroneously supposed.
The wood was in full foliage, and cast a pleasant shade upon the
rocks, which were spotted with grey lichens or covered with verdant
moss. Here passed the day; and evening came, with silence and
darkness, for even the stillness of that lonely isle became more
still. The wild bees and the buzzing flies forsook the caps of the
closing flowers for their homes in the hollows of the old pine-tree;
the notes of the mavis and merle died away; the deer came no more to
drink of the stream that trickled from the rocks, and the foliage of
the isle became moist with the falling dew.
As if in contrast to the storm of the previous evening, the night
came on clear, cloudless, starry, and beautiful.
Avoiding that side of the isle which was overlooked by the Duries'
castle of Ross-end, the earl sought the beach, where a few
fisher-boats were moored to rings in the rocks of a lonely creek.
The place was deserted, and not an eye beheld him. His resolutions
and execution were brief: selecting the smallest, he sprang on board,
cast off the painter, and seizing a pair of oars, each one of which
would have required an ordinary man to handle it, he pulled away from
the shore with a strength and activity that the sturdiest of our
fisher-wights might have viewed with satisfaction and envy. Though
as accomplished a knight as ever rode to battle, the earl was
somewhat of a seaman, for his father's castle in Forfarshire looked
down on Lunan Bay.
He was master of the little bark both by sail and oar; and knowing
somewhat of the dangerous navigation of that stately river, avoiding
those perilous rocks known as the Gunnel, on gaining the mid-stream
he set the brown lug-sail, which the unsuspecting proprietor had
prepared for the little fishing voyage of the morrow, and, favoured
by the ebb-tide, the current, and a soft west wind, bore with the
speed of a seagull straight down towards Inchkeith.
If the wind freshened, he had a thousand chances to one of being
swept helplessly out into the German Ocean; but the bold earl never
thought of that.
Alone in the middle of the broad and rapid Firth, its aspect seemed
to him magnificent, as the deep red light that lingered behind the
western Ochills tinged all its waves with a purple hue; but their
foam became a shower of silver, and white as winter frost, when it
broke against the shining cliffs, whereon rose the castle at the west
end of the island.
As the earl had resolved on freeing his mother and Sybil from their
captivity, his natural boldness prevented him from seeing any
difficulty in achieving this project, though he was alone in the
enterprise, armed only with his poniard and an old sword which he had
picked up in the brawl of the preceding night, and though the castle
was commanded by Sir James Hamilton of Barncleugh, with a small but
chosen party of soldiers.
"If a Seton could fear, I should certainly be afraid now," said the
earl, on seeing how the waves burst in foam on all sides of the
Inch--one moment sinking low, to show the reefs, which rose like
jagged teeth above them, and the next dashing in torrents against the
black volcanic bluffs. "Tut! by the pope! what a mouthful of
salt-water!" he added, as the spray was blown in his face, when he
dashed his boat through the breakers, and then, running along the lee
of the shore, struck his sail and slowly crept near the little creek,
which there forms the only landing-place; for on the east rushes the
whole current of the Firth, and on the west breaks the thundering
force of the German Sea.
The night had now come on, and solemn stillness reigned upon the isle.
The gates of the square tower which crowned its highest summit were
closed; but here and there a red ray glimmered from the deep windows
of its dusky mass.
"One of these lights," thought the earl, as he gazed upward, "may
shine on my dear Sybil's dark glossy hair and snow-white brow."
The tide was low, and he ran the boat into a little cavern which lay
near the creek; it was, in reality, but the top of a deep chasm in
the rocks, having a clear sandy bottom, where he could distinctly
perceive the layers of dark pebbles, of bright shells, and waving
sea-weed, far down below, when the clear moon rose above the
Lammermuir, to shed its radiance on the heaving water.
Resolving to wait till midnight, when all the inhabitants of the town
most probably would be asleep, and when, with more security, he could
make a reconnaissance of the isle and the barbican wall, the earl
guided his boat into the narrow little fissure, which is one of many
that perforate the island. While endeavouring to prevent its jarring
on the flinty rocks, he was greatly alarmed by perceiving a human
figure spring off a shelf of the volcanic wall, and plunge heavily
into the deep dark water of the chasm, which penetrated, he knew not
how far, into the heart of the island, but which, as it receded,
became more appalling by its utter obscurity and subterranean
character.