Jane Seton; or, The King's Advocate: A Scottish Historical Romance
fury, that the calmer Barncleugh ran his sword through his doublet
(and grazed his ribs) up to the very hilt.
Imagining that he was run through the body and slain, the earl seized
the guard of Barncleugh's sword, to retain it in his body, and
closing up with his own sword shortened in his hand, buried the point
in the breast of Barncleugh, whose plum-coloured doublet was covered
with blood in a moment. Then hurling him to the earth, he sprang
wildly on board the boat, with one sword in his hand, and another, to
all appearance, in his body.
At the same moment, a loud "Hallo!" again rang in his ears--a rapid
explosion followed, and the balls of three arquebuses whistled past
his head. Thinking only of Sybil, he pushed off the boat, forgetting
altogether the poor black page, whose tongue was unable to cry either
for pity or succour; and thus Sabrino was left behind again.
Raising himself on his left hand, while with his right he endeavoured
to staunch the blood that flowed from his wound, Sir James Hamilton
cried hoarsely and feebly--
"To your arquebuses again, ye knaves--again! Shoot, and shoot
surely! See, 'tis the black devil again!--there--there--in the
water! To your arquebuses--shoot, shoot, with a wannion upon you!"
The three arquebusiers stuck their forks in the sand, and levelled
their heavy fire-arms over them. Again two large bullets whistled
after the earl, and one dashed the spray about the black woolly head
of Sabrino, which was visible on the moonlighted water; but he dived
like a duck and disappeared. The reports of these large fire-arms
rang with a hundred reverberations among the cliffs and caverns of
the isle, and in the fissured rocks of the Longcraig (a reef which
guards it on the east), until they died away on the winds that blew
freshly down the river from the west.
"To the boat! to the boat!--follow, and shoot! _A Hamilton! a
Hamilton!_" cried Barncleugh, as he sank back choked in blood.
"Seton, and _Set on_!" replied the earl, with the punning slogan of
his house; "for, by St. Andrew, there is one Hamilton less in the
world!" and with savage glee he plucked from his doublet, and flung
back to the shore, Sir James's sword.
Then snatching his oars, he placed his feet firmly against the
stretchers in the bottom of the boat, and intent only on leaving the
island as far behind as possible, pulled with all strength away from
its rocky shores.
After some delay, Barncleugh's followers unmoored their boat, which,
by a chain and padlock, was secured to an iron ring; and then pushed
off, two plying their arquebuses, while four plied their oars. Away
they came, with a shout that floated far over the still water; but by
this time the earl was nearly half a mile from the island, and,
acting under a natural reaction of feelings, Sybil waved her
handkerchief, in token of the triumph and defiance which had replaced
her previous terror.
Lustily pulled the brave earl, and even Sybil would have put her
dimpled hands to the oars to assist him, had she not soon required
both to grasp the seat beside him, as their little boat rose like a
cork on the heavy ground-swell that rolls between the island and the
shores of Lothian.
The wind was rising.
It blew freshly down the Firth, and as the tide was ebbing now, a
strong current ran seaward--a current against which the solitary
rower struggled in vain; for in fifteen minutes he found they were
swept far below the island.
He saw the four oars of his pursuers flashing in the moonlight, and
the glitter of steel announced that they were well armed; while every
successive gust of wind that swept over the curling water brought
nearer and nearer their triumphant shout; and he could see how, at
times, they paused, and complacently looked over their shoulders to
contemplate the distance as it lessened by their efforts.
And it was lessening fast!
The earl thought of Sybil, and of what her feelings would be if he
was taken, and of what she and his mother would experience if he was
brought back to the island a breathless corpse. These anxieties
received an additional impulse by the flash of an arquebuse from the
pursuing boat; and the earl saw that the bullet skipped over the
waves far ahead of him.
There was now but one alternative, and he did not hesitate to adopt
it.
Stepping the little mast, he hoisted the lugsail, squared it to the
western breeze, grasped the tiller, while Sybil threw her arms around
him; and now their boat, sharp-prowed and clinker-built, like all the
Scottish fisher craft, favoured by the wind, by the ebbing tide, and
the fast flowing river, flew like a gull down the widening Firth; and
then a shout of anger announced that the followers of Barncleugh were
left far behind.
* * * * *
Grasped by a watchman of the tower, when in the very act of
attempting to descend, the Countess of Ashkirk, as we have related,
had been left behind; but she saw from her window the flash of steel
on the beach; she heard the shouts and outcries of the Hamiltons, and
prayed and trembled for her son. She saw the two boats which shot
off from the island, on the bright surface of the glittering river,
which was all shining like a mirror, save where a flitting cloud
obscured it. She had seen these boats lessening in the distance; and
again on her knees she implored St. Bryde of Douglas to watch over
the safety and escape of her son, vowing to endow in her name a
yearly mass and an altar in the great church of St. Giles.
The countess knew not that her "brave rash bairn," as she called him,
had achieved both his safety and escape, until Sir James Hamilton was
carried into the tower bleeding profusely, and almost dying. Now it
was that the fierce feudal hatred in which she had been nurtured, and
in which she had reared her own son, jarred with her natural
kindliness and pity; and it was with a strange, and, as she often
thought, unchristian sentiment of joy and triumph, mingling with her
tenderness and compassion, she prepared lint and bandages, with some
of her favourite salves and recipes, for the wounded castellan, whose
sword-thrust she proceeded to probe and dress.
The moment Sir James's wound (which was a deep, but not dangerous
stab in the breast) was dressed, she hurried to the tower-head, and
looked towards the east, but neither of the boats were visible. The
moon had become obscured, the rising wind howled drearily through the
embrasures of the battlement, and the dusky shadow of a dark cloud
rested upon that part of the Firth where the boat of the earl had
last been visible.
The heart of Lady Ashkirk became oppressed by vague terrors; and
after praying as only the people of the olden time could pray, when
faith was strong in the land, and superstition was stronger, she
returned to the bedside of her patient; and such was her care and
skill, that in three days the hardy old knight was again seated at
his little tripod table by the tower gate, with the ocean below, and
the gulls around him, drinking his peg tankard of spiced Rochelle,
and playing chess with the seneschal of the establishment, who knew
his duty too well ever to attempt to win a game; thus that
easy-tempered personage allowed himself to be defeated ten times
a-day, if nine victories did not satisfy the old knight, his master
and antagonist.
CHAPTER XLII.
DAVID'S TOWER--THE PHYSICIAN.
"Ah, no more can gladden me
Sunny shores or dark projections,
Where in emulous reflections
Blend the rival land and sea;
Where alike in charms and powers,
Where the woods and waves are meeting--
Flowers with foam are seen competing--
Sparkling with the snow-white showers."
CALDERON'S _Constant Prince._
In the reign of James V. the Castle of Edinburgh was composed of
numerous round and square bastel-houses, which, connected by curtain
walls, surrounded the summit of the rock, and were built in various
ages by successive princes, and presented the various cadences of
architecture, from the strong grim peels of Malcolm Ceanmhor to the
florid Scoto-French towers of the fourth and fifth Jameses.
The principal of these bastel-houses was named King David's Tower.
It was erected by David II. in 1357, and therein he died on the 7th
May, thirteen years after, when planning a new crusade. This keep
was of great height and strength, and overhung the cliff, which now
looks down on the gardens of Princes-street, two hundred feet below.
One of its lofty turrets was struck by lightning during a terrific
storm, on All Saints' Day, 1524; the shattered fragments fell into
the loch, and the electric fluid set the apartments of the
queen-dowager Margaret on fire. On its summit James V. placed thirty
pieces of cannon. The larger chamber within it was named the Lords'
Hall; another was styled the New Court Kitchen;--but its first
apartments were a range of dreary vaults; for the whole edifice was a
veritable castle, with its dungeons below and battlements above. On
the latter were a flag-staff, and an iron baile to herald foreign
invasion to the shores of Fife and Stirling; just similar to one
which still remains on Mylnes-mount below the Argyle battery.
In the same vaulted apartment wherein James V. had, six years before,
confined John Scott, a miracle-monger, who pretended that the Virgin
Mary could maintain him for any length of time without food, Lady
Jane Seton had been detained since her condemnation. Though the
strength of the tower was great, its walls of stone being ten feet
thick, its doors of iron deep and narrow, and having other securities
in the shape of high curtain walls, higher rocks, cannon, towers, and
portcullises, the Master Porter of the castle (that supernatural
guards might not be wanting) had painted on the chamber door a
flaming red cross; and thereafter nailed on a horseshoe, a fox's
face, with a bunch of rosemary and rowan-tree, all of which, he had
no doubt, would do more than stone redoubts and iron doors to keep
the witch in and the devil out.
Let us take a view of her as she appeared on the second day after her
trial, for it was now the second, and she had but three days to live.
It was evening now, and the kirk and convent bells of the city below
were floating upward to her grated window, which was open, for the
season was the sultry month of July. The whole apartment was as bare
and stony in its aspect as the arch of a bridge, or any of those
caverns in which we have seen Lord Ashkirk hiding; for the groined
arch, the low massive walls, and the floor, were all composed of
squared blocks of freestone, quarried from the rocks in the
neighbourhood. Its whole furniture consisted of a chair and table,
the latter being composed of mere fir planks; a leather jar of water,
and a bed situated within an arched recess, like a pedestalled tomb
in some old church; but, being destitute of curtains and bedding, it
was a mere paillasse. Everything was inferior to what was used by
the king's soldiers.
A witch required little.
All shrunk from her now; even Lady Cranstoun Riddel, who had formerly
been so kind, avoided her; while her husband, the governor, having
before his eyes the wrath of the king and the cardinal (who was more
dreaded than ten kings), also remained aloof. Thus no visitor ever
disturbed her sad and solitary reflections, save the under-warder,
who came hastily and stealthily to deposit her food--a coarse bannock
and water tinged with a little wine--and as hurriedly withdrew,
fearing to meet a glance of her eye---for witches were thought to
possess eyes of evil power.
The coarse bannock, the sole food offered her, remained untasted, for
it was salt and bitter; the water was her only nourishment, for