THE LAIGH COUNCIL HOUSE.
Ye holy martyrs, who with wond'rous faith,
And constancy unshaken have sustained
The rage of cruel men and fiery persecutions;
Come to my aid and teach me to defy
The malice of this fiend!
TAMERLANE.
The moon had passed westward; the close was gloomy as a chasm; and
Walter's prison became dark as a cave in the bowels of a mountain.
The clank of chains and bars as the door was opened roused the
prisoner from his waking dreams; a yellow light flashed along the
heavily jointed stone walls, and the harsh unpleasant voice of Macer
Maclutchy cried authoritatively--
"Maister Walter Fenton!--now, then, come forth instanter. Ye are
required by the Lords of the Privy Council."
A thrill shot through Walter's heart: he endeavoured in vain to
suppress it, and, taking up his plain beaver hat, which was looped
with a ribbon and cockade à la Monmouth in the military fashion, he
descended the narrow spiral stair, preceded by the macer carrying his
symbol of office on his right shoulder, and attired in a long flowing
black gown. Two of the Town-guard, with their pole-axes, and
Dunbraiken their captain,--a portly citizen, whose vast paunch, cased
in corslet and backpiece, made him resemble a mighty tortoise
erect,--kept close behind; and thus escorted, Walter set out from his
prison, to appear before a select committee of the dreaded Privy
Council of Scotland.
Encumbered by his long official garb, Macer Maclutchy's step was none
of the most steady. He was evidently after his evening potations at
Lucky Dreeps; he wore his bonnet cocked well forward; and such a
provoking smirk of vulgar importance pervaded his features when, from
time to time, he surveyed his prisoner, that the latter was only
restrained by the axes behind from knocking him down.
In those days the hour of dinner was about one or two o'clock; but as
the Earl of Perth, the Lords Clermistonlee, Mersington, and others
loved their wine too well to leave it soon for dry matters of state,
and the thumbscrewing of witches and non-conformists, the evening was
far advanced before Walter Fenton was summoned for examination in the
Laigh Chamber, where the Council held their meetings under the
Parliament Hall, in a dark and gloomy region, where lights are always
burned even yet during the longest days of summer.
Passing a narrow pend or archway (where, in the following year, the
Lord President Lockhart was shot by Chiesly of Dairy), Walter and his
conductors issued into the dark and deserted Lawnmarket, passed the
Heart of Midlothian, from the western platform of which, the black
beam of the gibbet stretched its ghastly arm in the moonlight,--and
reached the antique Parliament Square, a quadrangle of quaint
architecture, which had recently been graced by a beautiful statue of
Charles II. On one side rose the square tower and gigantic façade of
St. Giles, with its traceried windows, its rich battlements and
carved pinnacles all glittering in the moonlight, which poured aslant
over several immense piles of building raised on Venetian arcades,
and made all the windows of the Goldsmiths' Hall glitter with the
same pale lustre that tipped the round towers of the Tolbooth, the
square turrets and circular spire of the Parliament House, the whole
front of which was involved in opaque and gloomy shadow, from which
the grand equestrian statue of King Charles, edged by the glorious
moonlight, stood vividly forth like a gigantic horseman of polished
silver.
The square was silent and still, as it was black and gloomy. A faint
chorus stole on the passing wind, and then died away. It came from
the hostel, or coffee-house, of Hugh Blair, a famous vintner, whose
premises were under the low-browed and massive piazza before
mentioned. The deep ding-dong of the cathedral bell, vibrating
sonorously from the great stone chambers of the tower, made Walter
start. It struck the hour of nine, and, save its echoes dying away
in the hollow aisles and deep vaults of the ancient church, no other
sound broke the silence of the place; and Walter felt a palpable
chill sinking heavily on his spirit, when, guided by the macer, they
penetrated the cold shade of the quadrangle, and by a richly carved
doorway were admitted into the lobby of the house, which was spacious
and lofty enough to be the hall of a lordly castle. From thence
another door gave admittance into that magnificent place of assembly
where once the estates of Scotland met--
"Ere her faithless sons betrayed her."
Its rich and intricate roof towered far away into dusky obscurity;
its vast space and lofty walls of polished stone echoed hollowly to
their footsteps; and the bright moon, streaming through the mullioned
and painted windows, threw a thousand prismatic hues on the oaken
floor, on the grotesque corbels, and innumerable knosps and gilded
pendants of its beautiful roof,--on the crimson benches of the
peers,--on the throne, with its festooned canopy,--on the dark
banners and darker paintings, bringing a hundred objects into strong
relief, sinking others in sombre shadow, and tipping with silver the
square-bladed axes and conical helmets of the Town-guardsmen as they
passed the great south oriel, with its triple mullions and heraldic
blazonry.
From thence steep, narrow, and intricate stairs led them to the
regions of the political Inquisition, and the wind that rushed upward
felt cold and dewy as they descended. At the bottom there branched
off a variety of stone passages, where flambeaux flared and cressets
sputtered in the night wind, and cast their lurid light on the dusky
walls. And now a confused murmur of voices announced to the anxious
Fenton that he was close to this terrible conclave, whose presence
few left but on the hurdle of the executioner.
In an anteroom a crowd of macers, city guardsmen, messengers-at-arms,
and officials in the blue livery of the city, laced with yellow, and
wearing the triple castle on their cuffs and collars, a number of
persons cited as witnesses, &c., lounged about, or lolled on the
wooden benches. The ceiling of the apartment was low, and the deep
recesses of the doors and windows showed the vast solidity of the
massively panelled walls. A huge fire blazed in a grate that
resembled an iron basket on four sturdy legs, and its red light
glinted on the varied costumes, the weather-beaten visages, polished
headpieces and partisans of those who crowded round it. The entrance
of Walter Fenton and his escort excited neither attention nor
curiosity; and feeling acutely his degraded position, he sought a
retired corner, and seated himself on a wooden bench. The groups
around him conversed only in whispers. A murmur of voices came at
intervals from the inner chamber; and Walter often gazed with deep
interest at its antiquely fashioned doorway, the features of which
remained long and vividly impressed on his memory; for he longed to
behold, but dreaded to encounter, the stern conclave its carved
panels concealed from his view.
Anon a cry--a shrill and fearful cry--announced that some dreadful
work was being enacted within; every man looked gravely in his
neighbour's face, (save Maclutchy, who smiled,) and the blood rushed
back on Walter's heart tumultuously. Deep, hollow, and
heart-harrowing groans succeeded; then were heard the sound of
hammers and the creaking of a block as when a rope runs rapidly
through the sheave; then a low murmur of voices again, and all was
still; so still, that Walter heard the pulsations of his heart, and
in spite of his natural courage, it quailed at the prospect of what
he too might have to undergo.
Suddenly the door of the dreaded chamber flew open, and the common
Doomster and his two assistants, with their muscular arms bared, and
their leather aprons girt up for exertion, issued forth, bearing the
half lifeless and wholly miserable Ichabod Bummel. His countenance
was pale and ghastly; his teeth were clenched, and his eyes set; his
limbs hanging pendant and powerless, bore terrible evidence of the
agonies caused by the iron boots, as his fingers, covered with blood,
did of the thumb-screws. He groaned heavily.
"What has the gallows loon confessed, Pate?" asked Maclutchy, eagerly.
"Sae muckle, that the pyets will be pyking his head on the
Netherbow-porte when the sun rises the morn," replied Mr. Patrick
Pincer, the heartless finisher of the law, whose brawny arms and
blood-stained apron, together with all the disgusting associations of
his frightful occupation rendered him a revolting character. "He
defied the haill council as a generation o' vipers; boasted o' being
a naturalized Hollander, and denied his ain mother-country."
"Wretch!" muttered Bummel, "well might I deny the land that produces
such as thee. But there is yet a time, and in Heaven is all my
trust."
"Silence in court!" said the macer, imperiously thrusting the brass
crown of his baton in the sufferer's mouth. "Ay, ay, denying his ain
country, eh?"
"Till my Lord Clermistonlee recommended a touch o' the caspie-claws,
and wow, Sirs, the loon stood them brawly, but when we gied him a
twinge wi' the airn buits, my certie! they did mak' him skirl! Did
ye no hear him confessing, lads?"
"What! what?"
"Ou just onything they asked him. Treason, awfu' to hear; about a
Dutch invasion and a rebellion among the Westland whigs, to whom he
shewed letters from Flume o' Polwarth, Fagel the Pensioner o'
Holland, Dyckvelt the Flemish spy, and a' hidden whar d'ye think?"
"Deil kens; in his wame, may be."
"Hoots; sewit up in the lining o' his braid bonnet."
The poor fainting preacher had now the felicity of being stared at by
a crowd who pitied him no more than the strong-armed torturers whose
grasp sustained his supine and inert frame.
"Soldier," said he to one near him, "art thou a son of the Roman
antichrist?"
"Na, I am Habbie, the son o' my faither, auld John Elshender, a
cottar body, at the Burghmuirend."
"Then, in the name of God," implored the poor man in a weak and
wavering voice, "give me but a drop o' water to quench my thirst,
for, oh youth, I suffer the torments of hell!"
The soldier who seemed to be a good-natured young fellow, readily
brought a pitcher of water, from which Bummel drank greedily and
convulsively, muttering at intervals,
"'Tis sweet--sweet as aqua-coelestis, whilk is thrice rectified wine.
Heaven bless thee, soldier, and reward thee, for I cannot." He burst
into tears.
"Hath he taken the test," asked Maclutchy, "and did he acknowledge
the king's authority?"
"Ou onything, and so would you, Maclutchy, gif I had ye under my hand
as I'll soon hae that young birkie in the corner."
"'Tis false!" cried Ichabod Bummel, through his clenched teeth, "and
sooner than acknowledge that bloody and papistical duke, I would
kiss, yea, and believe the book of the accursed Mohamet, whilk as I
shew in my '_Bombshell aimit at the taile of the great Beast_,' was
written on auld spule banes, and kept by the gude wife of the
impostor in a meal girnel. But fie! and out upon ye, fiends, for lo,
the hour of our triumph and deliverance from tyrants and massemongers
is at hand. O, why tarry the chariot wheels of our Deliverer?"
"I like ane owl in desart am,
That nightly----"
"What!" exclaimed Maclutchy, in legal horror, "would ye dare to skirl
a psalm within earshot o' the very Lords o' Council, ye desperate
cheat, the woodie! Awa wi' him by the lug and horn, or he'll bring
the roof about us." He was hurried off.
Walter was deeply moved. Pity and indignation stirred his heart by
turns, but he had not much time for reflection; at that moment the
drawling voice of the crier was heard, calling with a cadence
peculiar to the Scottish courts,
"Maister-Walter-Fenton."
He became more alive to his own immediate danger, and ere he well
knew what passed, found himself in another gloomy and pannelled
apartment, one-half of which was hung with scarlet cloth. On a dais
stood the vacant throne with the royal arms of Scotland glittering
under a canopy of velvet, festooned and fringed with gold.
Scott has given us a graphic picture of this strange tribunal, when
it was presided over by the odious Duke of Lauderdale. Let us take a
view of it as it appeared six years after, when that scourge of the
Presbyterians had departed to render at a greater bar an account of
his tyranny and enormities.