Jane Seton; or, The King's Advocate: A Scottish Historical Romance
after trial) to a further ordeal; for no persecution, even unto the
last hour, was deemed too severe for those unhappy beings who were
accused of the imaginary crime of selling their souls to Satan, and
thus irrevocably dooming themselves to a punishment that was
everlasting.
Two of the most favourite modes of prolonged tortured were, to
prevent the prisoner from sleeping by every device that the most
infernal ingenuity could suggest, and to feed them on bread salted
most liberally, to produce an intense thirst, to assuage which the
least drop of water was denied them.
Under this treatment many became insane, for the kirk sessions
carried it to the most ferocious excess in the seventeenth century.
On being awakened, and partially recovering from her terror, Jane's
first sensation was an inordinate desire for water; her thirst was
excessive. Her tongue was parched and painful, for her food during
the two past days had been coarse dry wheaten bannocks, rendered
bitter by the plentiful supply of salt used in their composition.
She had been too much accustomed to the most cruel and unceremonious
intrusions, to express her keen sense of the present one, otherwise
than by her flashing eyes and dilated nostrils, for her heart swelled
with indignation; but, on perceiving the jar in the hands of Sanders
Screw, her first thought was to satisfy her thirst, and she implored
them to give her a cup of water.
At this plaintive request, a grin spread over the weasel visage of
Screw and the cat-like eyes of Dobbie, while Birrel, who was somewhat
intoxicated, replied with his habitual tone of insolence--
"By my faith, cummer Jean, ye shall be thirstier and drouthier than
even was I in Douglasdale, ere a drop rins ower your craig."
Screw set down the jar, placing himself between it and their victim.
The lamp was also placed on the floor, and seating themselves around
it, Dobbie produced from his wide trunk hose of buckram a pack of
dirty and dog-eared cards. Each worthy official then placed beside
him a flask of usquebaugh, the cards were dealt round, and the
campaign of the night commenced with an old game at which the three
might play, and Birrel could cheat to his heart's content,
notwithstanding that Dobbie knew the backs as well as the front of
his favourite pack of cards.
For a time Jane gazed at them with the same startled and dismayed
expression that the sudden appearance of three reptiles might have
excited; and again she begged a cup of water, for her thirst (which
had been increasing the live-long day, and to which her salted food,
the drugs of the physician, and the grief that preyed upon her, all
alike conduced) had now attained a degree of torture and intensity
which hitherto she could not have conceived.
Her entreaties were replied to with laughter; and it seemed as if the
sight of the liberal draughts imbibed by the trio from their flasks
increased the desire of the poor captive; but her prayers and tears
were unheeded, and noisily the game went on.
Two hours passed thus!
The players had drained their flasks, and amid much cursing,
quarrelling and vociferation, the loose change had rapidly passed
from hand to hand, until the whole, amounting to somewhere about ten
crowns, a few fleur-de-lis groats, and white pennies of James III.,
were lodged in the pouch of Birrel, who trimmed the lamp with his
fingers, and offered a brass bodle to each of his companions that the
game might begin anew; but, as the cards were being redealt, he
perceived that, despite their brutal uproar, overcome by weariness
and torture of mind and body, the unhappy girl had again fallen into
an uneasy slumber.
Upon this the brodder arose with a growl, and drawing his needle from
its sheath, gave her a severe puncture in the arm. The pain of this
made her again, with a shriek, start up wildly from her sitting
posture; and, uncovering her snow-white arm to the elbow, she found
that blood was flowing from the deep incision.
With her imploring eyes full of horror, she turned towards Birrel and
endeavoured to speak, but her tongue, which clove to the roof of her
mouth, failed, at first, to articulate a syllable; and her lips were
hard and dry.
"Did I not tell ye quhat ye micht expect gif ye dared to sleep," said
Birrel, savagely.
She made a gasping effort to speak.
"Water!" she said, in a husky whisper, "water!--a single drop, for
the love of God!"
"Oho!" grinned Screw, "the saut bannocks are now telling tales!"
He held the Flemish jar of polished pewter before her eyes and shook
the limpid water till it sparkled in the light.
"The haill o' this is for you, dame Seton," said Birrel, "but there
is a sma' bit ceremony to be gone through first."
"Water! water!" moaned Jane, in a whispering voice, feeling as if her
throat was scorched, and her dry, parched tongue was swollen to twice
its usual size. "Oh, man, man!" she added, clasping her hands, "I
will pray for you--I will bless you in my last hour, with my whole
heart, and with my whole soul, for one drop, a single drop of water!"
There never was a villain so bad as to be without one redeeming
trait; thus, even Dobbie the doomster had his; and now the piteous
tone of Jane's husky voice, her pallid face, her entreating and
bloodshot eyes, had stirred some secret chord of human sympathy in
the recesses of his usually iron heart. He poured a little water
into a cup, and approached her. Jane's eyes flashed with
thankfulness and joy; but Birrel dashed away the cup with one hand,
and laid the other on his poniard.
Jane uttered a tremulous cry of despair.
"Then false coof and half-witted staumrel!" exclaimed the
witchfinder; "is it thus ye obey the orders of Redhall, who is our
master? Look ye, good mistress, subscribe this paper and we leave
you wi' the water-stoup, to drink and to sleep till your heart is
contented. But refuse, and woe be unto ye! For here sit we doon to
watch by turns, to keep ye, waking and sleepless, with thirst
unslackened, till _the hour of doom_, and so, my Lady Seton, ye have
the option; sign and drink, or refuse and suffer."
With one hand he held before her the large and brimming jar; with the
other he displayed a paper whereon something was written.
Within the deep jar the water seemed cold and pure, limpid and
refreshing; while her thirst was agonizing, and her whole frame felt
as if scorched by an internal fire. Her brain was whirling, a
sickness was coming over her, and human endurance could withstand the
temptation no longer.
For a moment she reflected that it was impossible for any avowal,
verbal or written, to make her more utterly miserable or degraded
than her sentence had already made her, and aware that nothing now
could change the current of her fate save the royal pardon, of which
she had not the shadow of a hope, she could only articulate--
"A pen, a pen!--the water!--the water! I am dying--dying of thirst!"
Promptly Birrel produced a pen, which he dipped in a portable
inkstand.
She took it with a trembling hand and paused.
He temptingly poured some of the sparkling water on the floor. A
gleam passed over her eyes, and in a moment she placed her name,
_Jane Seton_, to the paper, vainly endeavouring, as she did so, to
see what the lines written above her signature contained; but there
was a mist before her eyes, and now they failed her. She threw away
the pen with a shriek, and stretched out her hands towards the vessel
of water.
"What would ye think, now, if I spilled it all on the flagstones?"
said Birrel, with a grin, as he withheld the jar.
At this cruel threat she could only clasp her hands, and gaze at him
in silence.
After enjoying her agony for a few moments, he handed her the jar,
from which she drank greedily and thirstily.
"Hechhow!" said Birrel, with a triumphant growl, "now ye drink,
cummer, as I drank of the Douglasburn, at the foot of the
Cairntable," and, extinguishing their lamp, the three wretches
retired, and she was left to her own terrible thoughts.
Again and again she drank of the water, but the thrill of delight its
coolness and freshness afforded her soon passed away; and setting
down the vessel carefully, she gazed at it, and then burst into a
passion of tears.
The paper she had signed, what could it mean?
At that moment the clock of St. Cuthbert's church, which stood in the
hollow far down below the Castle, on the west, struck slowly and
solemnly the hour of four, and this sound, as it ascended to her ear,
recalled her to other thoughts.
The morning was shining through the rusty grating of her window--the
morning of another day. She thought bitterly of the paper she had
signed; and deploring her lack of strength and resolution, buried her
lace in her pillow, and gave way at last to a wild paroxysm of
despair.
CHAPTER XLVII.
WHAT THE PAPER CONTAINED.
"Oh, misery!
While I was dragged by an insidious band
Of pyrates--savage bloodhounds--into bondage.
But, witness, heaven! witness, ye midnight hours,
That heard my ceaseless groans, how her dear image
Grew to my very heart!"--_The Desart Island_, 1760.
Sleepless, and with the horrible conversation of Birrel and Dobbie
still tingling in his ears, Roland passed the night in that frame of
mind we have endeavoured to describe, though it can be better
conceived.
The morning dawned, and the thick gratings of the windows appeared in
strong relief against the saffron sky, and sounds of life arose from
the waking city below. The bright sun was gilding the vane of St.
Giles, the spire of the Dominicans, the square tower of St.
Mary-in-the-Fields, and the lofty summits of the town, while, like a
golden snake, the Forth was seen winding afar between the wooded
mountains of the west.
With arms folded, his head sunk upon his breast, and his hollow eyes
fixed dreamily on the floor, Roland was immersed in a chaos of gloomy
thoughts, when a noise occasioned by a hand raising a window opposite
startled him. He looked up, and a letter fell at his feet.
He clutched and tore it open.
"Jane! from Jane--from my dear Jane?" he exclaimed, huskily, and
pressed her signature to his lips. "It is signed by herself (how
well I know that dear signature!) but another has written it--St.
Bernard, perhaps. Ah, my God! she is too ill to write, and they
separate me from her. Jane--Jane!"
Now Sir Roland Vipont, though a poor gentleman and soldier of fortune
of the sixteenth century, knew enough of scholarcraft (which, like
every other craft, was not held then in much repute) to enable him to
decipher the letter of Jane Seton, or rather that letter which, by
the order of Redhall, Birrel had compelled her to sign by the bribe
alternately offered and withheld--a draught of cold water.
For a time there was an envious mist before the hot dry eyes of
Roland Vipont; and thrice he had to pause before he so far recovered
his energies as to be able to read this epistle, which had been thus
delivered to him by the hand of a friend, as he did not doubt.
Literally, it ran as follows:
"MINE OWN SWEET HEART, SIR ROLAND,
"Abandoned now by my evil Mentor, and inspired by the blessed saints,
who know all things, uninfluenced by any man, and of mine own free
will, I hereby confess, certify, and make known unto you, that I have
indeed been guilty of the sorcery and witchcraft of which I am
accused; and that queen Magdalene died by the same magic and power of
enchantment which forced thee to love me. Thus, the strong regard
thou bearest me is in no way attributable to any beauty, manner, or
apparent goodness, with which nature hath gifted me; but solely to my
diabolical arts and sorceries. At this thou wilt be sorely grieved,