Jane Seton; or, The King's Advocate: A Scottish Historical Romance
have destroyed with the blind fury of a fiend! Can I not save thee
without burying myself under a mountain of disgrace as well as of
misery? And for this paltry tremor thou art left to die! thou, so
beautiful, so innocent, so pure in spirit and so single in heart!
The icy sweat is again on my brow, the iron in my heart--for all
thine image is before me, as it was once, so full of smiles and
pride, of bloom and high-born loveliness, as on that night at
Holyrood.... Thy voice is ever in my ear, thy name on my lip!...
Oh, misery! oh, for one hour of oblivion!..."
He sprang up, and slowly descending the narrow path by the base of
the castle rock, below St. Margaret's Tower, approached the loch, but
without any defined object. The stillness of its dark and almost
waveless water had something in it that attracted him involuntarily
towards it.
The loch was then full and the water deep.
"Coward that I am!" he thought; "one bold plunge and all would be
over."
The temptation was a strong one: there was a rushing in his ears, a
whirling in his brain, and a fearful palsy in his heart, which seemed
to stand for a moment still; he looked around him hurriedly, and no
one seemed near.
But a single star was visible, like a watching eye, and its rays were
reflected in the motionless water under the solemn shadow of the
impending rocks.
At such a moment the human mind is like a bullet which a hair may
turn aside.
He took one step backward, and was about to make the desperate leap,
when the sound of voices and footsteps arrested him; and, like one
surprised in a guilty action, he shrunk behind a clump of wild hazel
bushes, and thus was saved from the committal of another heavy crime.
Two men, whom he had not before observed, now appeared on the narrow
pathway below. One was mounted, clad in half armour, and by the
ostrich feather which waved in his bonnet, appeared to be a
gentleman; the other was on foot, and led a horse by the bridle.
Redhall heard the name of _Vipont_.
It called up all his evil passions and bitter memories. It restored
him to life and energy of purpose. He put his hand on the hilt of
his sword, and listening, approached them stealthily.
CHAPTER LVIII.
THE LAW OF THE SWORD.
"Dost thou, O traitor! thus to grace pretend,
Clad as thou art in trophies of my friend?
To his sad soul, a grateful offering go!
'Tis Pallas, Pallas gives this deadly blow.
He raised his arm aloft, and, at the word,
Deep in his bosom drove the shining sword.
The streaming blood distained his arms around,
And the disdainful soul came rushing through the wound."
_Æneid_, XII.
According to the tenour of his last conversation with his unfortunate
lieutenant, when they supped at the _Cross and Gillstoup_, Sir John
Forrester had not forgotten the safety of their mutual friend,
Vipont; and being well aware that the hostility of the king's
advocate had no boundary but death, while the cruel assassination of
Leslie, the scarcely less cruel visit of Redhall to Jane, and the
destruction of the pardon in David's Tower were taking place, he had
prepared everything for the escape of Roland from the fortress in
which he was confined.
Aware that the attention of the city without, and of the garrison
within the castle, of the governor, of the provost, and all the
authorities, was wholly occupied by the preparations for the
execution of the first sorceress to be burned in Scotland, this
gallant gentleman wisely considered the hour of midnight as the most
fitting time to achieve the liberty of his friend.
Aware that our agile acquaintance, Master Sabrino, could climb like a
squirrel, he had been employed by Forrester as the principal agent in
the adventure.
From the fields on the opposite bank of the loch Sabrino had been
shown the tower and the window of the apartment wherein Roland Vipont
was confined, and to that window, at nightfall, the active negro had
clambered with wondrous bravery and skill; and had introduced to the
tower a pair of saws formed of the sharpest steel, and a strong cord,
of great length, knotted with loops for the hands and feet, by which
he was to descend some twenty yards of the most dangerous part of the
rocks; while Sabrino, who could cling to their perpendicular front as
a fly does to the wall, was to descend without other aid than his own
black paws and tenacious feet.
At the very time that Redhall approached, and in the two figures
recognised the captain of the king's guard and the old servant of
Roland Vipont, the latter had just removed (by the aid of his saws)
the last bar from the window, and trembling with eagerness, was
preparing to descend the rope-ladder which Sabrino, with a broad grin
on his vast mouth and in his shining eyes, fastened to the remaining
stumps of the stanchels.
Who the kind person might be that had furnished and sent the bold
page with these means of escape, Roland had no means of ascertaining;
for, being tongueless, poor Sabrino was mute as a fish; and of all
his innumerable signs and nods, winks and unearthly chuckles, the
master of the ordnance could make nothing.
A plain wooden prie-dieu formed part of the furniture of his
apartment. On his knees Roland Vipont sank into it, and on a lock of
Jane's hair fixed a long, a passionate, and indescribable gaze of
love and sorrow, and then uttered a brief, emphatic prayer.
"Innocent or guilty, I will see her once again, or die in the
attempt," said he, placing the ringlet in his bosom, and preparing to
descend.
The passage of the window was easily accomplished; and reaching the
base of the tower, he found himself upon a narrow ledge of rock; the
chill wind rushed up past him, and voices were faintly borne with it
from below. There, the cliff on which King David's Tower was built
is somewhat impending, and from the broad battlements a plumb-line
might, without meeting an obstacle, be dropped to the depth of nearly
two hundred and fifty feet, to the pathway on which Sir John
Forrester and Lintstock stood on that night. If dropped one yard
beyond the rock, it would have fallen into the waters of the lake.
Roland's heart expanded in his breast; for to his active spirit,
which had writhed in captivity, there was almost a relief in the new
energy of action.
He descended with equal rapidity and boldness, for he was utterly
regardless of life; and this very carelessness was perhaps his
salvation, by affording him the means of achieving that in which the
timid or the wary man would inevitably have failed. The wild
wallflower, the strong docken blades, the long grass, the longer and
more tenacious ivy which grew in the clefts of the rocks, or overhung
their lichen-spotted brows, afforded him the means of descent after
he had passed the bottom of the cord.
In the darkness and obscurity of the night, he could not have been
seen even from the windows of Wallace's Tower or the Constable's
Tower, but now their inmates had all deserted them; for the entire
population of the castle were crowding on the battlements of the
great peel, the eastern curtain, and the spur, which overlooked the
place of execution, the preparations for which were being made on the
south side of the Castle-hill.
He had one risk of discovery alone; for, not eighty yards from where
Forrester awaited him, the pathway was crossed and defended by the
Well-house Tower.
Those of our readers who may have perused our "Memorials" of the
ancient fortress, may remember how frequently we had occasion to
mention this now ruined ravelin.
Built over a fountain, the waters of which fed the loch, this strong
square tower rose within six feet of the enormous perpendicular cliff
sustaining David's Tower. A massive wall, having an archway with an
iron gate and loopholes for arrows and musketry, secured the narrow
path which led to St. Cuthbert's Church on one hand, and ascended the
Castle-hill on the other, passing between the tower and the rock.
The guard here had the treble duty of protecting the well, the
private roadway, and the city wall of A.D. 1450, which enclosed the
Castle-hill at its northern base. The tower was entered from the
inside of this flanking wall by two doors, which, by a stair partly
hewn in the rocks, led to the first and second floors. The upper was
at that time always occupied by a party of arquebusiers, and the
light of their guard-fire streamed redly through two narrow grated
windows upon the still dark bosom of the loch, which washed the north
wall, and rolled away in obscurity towards the east end of the city.
Then the wide ravine that yawned between the southern hill of the
Modern Athens and the giant ridge of Auld Reikie, her _mither-toun_,
was an impassable gulf. Now the waters have disappeared, but the
tide of life ebbs and flows in their place. A stupendous mound and a
lordly bridge now cross that hollow glen where the fountain welled
which David, "by consent of his earls and bishops," gifted to God and
the Holy Cross, and where the queen of Robert III. held her brilliant
tournaments; and now, the red gleam of the furnace, the hiss of the
steam-engine, the clink of hammers, the hum of voices, and the roar
of the railway train rise up from its depth to scare the woodcock,
the snipe, and the wild coof, who come as of old to seek the bed
where for ages the water lay.
Once only did Roland pause in his perilous descent, to assure himself
that he was not seen. Dislodged by his foot, a stone gave way, and
as it bounded from the rocks he heard it plash into the loch, far,
far down below. There, by its margin, stood Forrester and Lintstock
listening intently, and glancing silently at each other from time to
time; for, brave and adventurous though the age might be, there were
bounds, even in warlike Scotland, to hardihood and adventure.
"If he should be afraid to descend!" said Sir John.
"Afraid?" retorted Lintstock; "I have kent him, Sir John Forrester,
since he was a bairn that couldna' blaw his ain nose, and never saw
fear in his face yet.--There he comes," added the old cannonier, as
the stone we have just mentioned rolled over their heads and fell
into the calm loch, forming a hundred circles on its dark bosom;
"there he comes--there he comes!" continued the veteran, whose
solitary eye moistened with a tear as he uttered a fervent
supplication to "Sancta Barbara, the virgin and martyr, patroness of
all bold cannoniers and artillery" (according to the military
superstition of the age), to protect his master.
In a few minutes more, both Roland and Sabrino were seen descending
the dangerous path. Lintstock uttered a cry of satisfaction.
"Courage!" said Forrester, placing his hand at the side of his mouth,
lest the guard at the tower might overhear, and fire on them.
In another moment Roland, breathless with his exertions, was beside
them, and in the arms of his old servant, who swore and wept with joy.
His hair and beard were so disordered, that Forrester could scarcely
recognise him.
"My dear friend," said Roland, sadly, "if the thanks of one to whom
life is valueless are worth accepting, take them from me a thousand
times, and a thousand more. Believe me, I am almost mad--I know not
what I do, or what I say, or whether my words are incoherent as my
thoughts."
He was frightfully pale and haggard.
"Truly, Vipont, we live in strange times--times that future men will
talk of with wonder, for we participate in deeds of which our
posterity will scarcely believe," replied Forrester, gravely; "but I
pray you, mount and begone, for we have not a moment to lose!
Instant flight----"
"Horses and arms! by what magic hast thou divined my secret thought?