stake--Open, I say, or we will cause the door to be broken down.”
“I may not open the door without my royal mistress's orders,” answered
Roland; “she has been very ill, and now she slumbers--if you wake her by
using violence, let the consequence be on you and your followers.”
“Was ever woman in a strait so fearful!” exclaimed the Lady of
Lochleven--“At least, thou rash boy, beware that no one tastes the food,
but especially the jar of succory-water.”
She then hastened to the turret, where Dryfesdale had composedly
resigned himself to imprisonment. She found him reading, and demanded of
him, “Was thy fell potion of speedy operation?”
“Slow,” answered the steward. “The hag asked me which I chose--I
told her I loved a slow and sure revenge. 'Revenge,' said I, 'is the
highest-flavoured draught which man tastes upon earth, and he should sip
it by little and little--not drain it up greedily at once.”
“Against whom, unhappy man, couldst thou nourish so fell a revenge?”
“I had many objects, but the chief was that insolent page.”
“The boy!--thou inhuman man!” exclaimed the lady; “what could he do to
deserve thy malice?”
“He rose in your favour, and you graced him with your commissions--that
was one thing. He rose in that of George Douglas's also--that was
another. He was the favourite of the Calvinistic Henderson, who hated
me because my spirit disowns a separated priesthood. The Moabitish Queen
held him dear--winds from each opposing point blew in his favour--the
old servitor of your house was held lightly among ye--above all, from
the first time I saw his face, I longed to destroy him.”
“What fiend have I nurtured in my house!” replied the Lady. “May God
forgive me the sin of having given thee food and raiment!”
“You might not choose, Lady,” answered the steward. “Long ere this
castle was builded--ay, long ere the islet which sustains it reared its
head above the blue water, I was destined to be your faithful slave, and
you to be my ungrateful mistress. Remember you not when I plunged amid
the victorious French, in the time of this lady's mother, and brought
off your husband, when those who had hung at the same breasts with him
dared not attempt the rescue?--Remember how I plunged into the lake when
your grandson's skiff was overtaken by the tempest, boarded, and steered
her safe to the land. Lady--the servant of a Scottish baron is he who
regards not his own life, or that of any other, save his master. And,
for the death of the woman, I had tried the potion on her sooner,
had not Master George been her taster. Her death--would it not be the
happiest news that Scotland ever heard? Is she not of the bloody Guisian
stock, whose sword was so often red with the blood of God's saints? Is
she not the daughter of the wretched tyrant James, whom Heaven cast
down from his kingdom, and his pride, even as the king of Babylon was
smitten?”
“Peace, villain!” said the Lady--a thousand varied recollections
thronging on her mind at the mention of her royal lover's name; “Peace,
and disturb not the ashes of the dead--of the royal, of the unhappy
dead. Read thy Bible; and may God grant thee to avail thyself better of
its contents than thou hast yet done!” She departed hastily, and as she
reached the next apartment, the tears rose in her eyes so hastily, that
she was compelled to stop and use her kerchief to dry them. “I expected
not this,” she said, “no more than to have drawn water from the dry
flint, or sap from a withered tree. I saw with a dry eye the apostacy
and shame of George Douglas, the hope of my son's house--the child of my
love; and yet I now weep for him who has so long lain in his grave--for
him to whom I owe it that his daughter can make a scoffing and a jest of
my name! But she is _his_ daughter--my heart, hardened against her
for so many causes, relents when a glance of her eye places her father
unexpectedly before me--and as often her likeness to that true daughter
of the house of Guise, her detested mother, has again confirmed my
resolution. But she must not--must not die in my house, and by so foul
a practice. Thank God, the operation of the potion is slow, and may be
counteracted. I will to her apartment once more. But oh! that hardened
villain, whose fidelity we held in such esteem, and had such high proof
of! What miracle can unite so much wickedness and so much truth in one
bosom!”
The Lady of Lochleven was not aware how far minds of a certain gloomy
and determined cast by nature, may be warped by a keen sense of petty
injuries and insults, combining with the love of gain, and sense of
self-interest, and amalgamated with the crude, wild, and indigested
fanatical opinions which this man had gathered among the crazy sectaries
of Germany; or how far the doctrines of fatalism, which he had embraced
so decidedly, sear the human conscience, by representing our actions as
the result of inevitable necessity.
During her visit to the prisoner, Roland had communicated to Catherine
the tenor of the conversation he had had with her at the door of the
apartment. The quick intelligence of that lively maiden instantly
comprehended the outline of what was believed to have happened, but her
prejudices hurried her beyond the truth.
“They meant to have poisoned us,” she exclaimed in horror, “and there
stands the fatal liquor which should have done the deed!--Ay, as soon
as Douglas ceased to be our taster, our food was likely to be fatally
seasoned. Thou, Roland, who shouldst have made the essay, wert readily
doomed to die with us. Oh, dearest Lady Fleming, pardon, pardon, for the
injuries I said to you in my anger--your words were prompted by Heaven
to save our lives, and especially that of the injured Queen. But what
have we now to do? that old crocodile of the lake will be presently back
to shed her hypocritical tears over our dying agonies.--Lady Fleming,
what shall we do?”
“Our Lady help us in our need!” she replied; “how should I
tell?--unless we were to make our plaint to the Regent.”
“Make our plaint to the devil,” said Catherine impatiently, “and accuse
his dam at the foot of his burning throne!--The Queen still sleeps--we
must gain time. The poisoning hag must not know her scheme has
miscarried; the old envenomed spider has but too many ways of mending
her broken web. The jar of succory-water,” said she--“Roland, if
thou be'st a man, help me--empty the jar on the chimney or from the
window--make such waste among the viands as if we had made our usual
meal, and leave the fragments on cup and porringer, but taste nothing
as thou lovest thy life. I will sit by the Queen, and tell her at her
waking, in what a fearful pass we stand. Her sharp wit and ready spirit
will teach us what is best to be done. Meanwhile, till farther notice,
observe, Roland, that the Queen is in a state of torpor--that Lady
Fleming is indisposed--that character” (speaking in a lower tone) “will
suit her best, and save her wits some labour in vain. I am not so much
indisposed, thou understandest.”
“And I?” said the page--
“You?” replied Catherine, “you are quite well--who thinks it worth while
to poison puppy-dogs or pages?”
“Does this levity become the time?” asked the page.
“It does, it does,” answered Catherine Seyton; “if the Queen approves, I
see plainly how this disconcerted attempt may do us good service.”
She went to work while she spoke, eagerly assisted by Roland. The
breakfast table soon displayed the appearance as if the meal had been
eaten as usual; and the ladies retired as softly as possible into the
Queen's sleeping apartment. At a new summons of the Lady Lochleven,
the page undid the door, and admitted her into the anteroom, asking her
pardon for having withstood her, alleging in excuse, that the Queen had
fallen into a heavy slumber since she had broken her fast.
“She has eaten and drunken, then?” said the Lady of Lochleven.
“Surely,” replied the page, “according to her Grace's ordinary custom,
unless upon the fasts of the church.”
“The jar,” she said, hastily examining it, “it is empty--drank the Lady
Mary the whole of this water?”
“A large part, madam; and I heard the Lady Catherine Seyton jestingly
upbraid the Lady Mary Fleming with having taken more than a just share
of what remained, so that but little fell to her own lot.”
“And are they well in health?” said the Lady of Lochleven.
“Lady Fleming,” said the page, “complains of lethargy, and looks duller
than usual; and the Lady Catherine of Seyton feels her head somewhat
more giddy than is her wont.”
He raised his voice a little as he said these words, to apprise the
ladies of the part assigned to each of them, and not, perhaps, without
the wish of conveying to the ears of Catherine the page-like jest which
lurked in the allotment.
“I will enter the Queen's bedchamber,” said the Lady of Lochleven; “my
business is express.”
As she advanced to the door, the voice of Catherine Seyton was heard
from within--“No one can enter here--the Queen sleeps.”
“I will not be controlled, young lady,” replied the Lady of Lochleven;
“there is, I wot, no inner bar, and I will enter in your despite.”
“There is, indeed, no inner bar,” answered Catherine, firmly, “but there
are the staples where that bar should be; and into those staples have I
thrust mine arm, like an ancestress of your own, when, better employed
than the Douglasses of our days, she thus defended the bedchamber of
her sovereign against murderers. Try your force, then, and see whether a
Seyton cannot rival in courage a maiden of the house of Douglas.”
“I dare not attempt the pass at such risk,” said the Lady of Lochleven:
“Strange, that this Princess, with all that justly attaches to her
as blameworthy, should preserve such empire over the minds of her
attendants.--Damsel, I give thee my honour that I come for the Queen's
safety and advantage. Awaken her, if thou lovest her, and pray her leave
that I may enter--I will retire from the door the whilst.”
“Thou wilt not awaken the Queen?” said the Lady Fleming.
“What choice have we?” said the ready-witted maiden, “unless you deem
it better to wait till the Lady Lochleven herself plays lady of the
bedchamber. Her fit of patience will not last long, and the Queen must
be prepared to meet her.”
“But thou wilt bring back her Grace's fit by thus disturbing her.”
“Heaven forbid!” replied Catherine; “but if so, it must pass for an
effect of the poison. I hope better things, and that the Queen will be
able when she wakes to form her own judgment in this terrible crisis.
Meanwhile, do thou, dear Lady Fleming, practise to look as dull and
heavy as the alertness of thy spirit will permit.”
Catherine kneeled by the side of the Queen's bed, and, kissing her hand
repeatedly, succeeded at last in awakening without alarming her. She
seemed surprised to find that she was ready dressed, but sate up in her
bed, and appeared so perfectly composed, that Catherine Seyton, without
farther preamble, judged it safe to inform her of the predicament in
which they were placed. Mary turned pale, and crossed herself again and
again, when she heard the imminent danger in which she had stood. But,
like the Ulysses of Homer,
--Hardly waking yet,
Sprung in her mind the momentary wit,
and she at once understood her situation, with the dangers and
advantages that attended it.
“We cannot do better,” she said, after her hasty conference with
Catherine, pressing her at the same time to her bosom, and kissing her
forehead; “we cannot do better than to follow the scheme so happily
devised by thy quick wit and bold affection. Undo the door to the Lady
Lochleven--She shall meet her match in art, though not in perfidy.
Fleming, draw close the curtain, and get thee behind it--thou art a
better tire-woman than an actress; do but breathe heavily, and, if thou
wilt, groan slightly, and it will top thy part. Hark! they come. Now,
Catherine of Medicis, may thy spirit inspire me, for a cold northern
brain is too blunt for this scene!”
Ushered by Catherine Seyton, and stepping as light as she could, the
Lady Lochleven was shown into the twilight apartment, and conducted to
the side of the couch, where Mary, pallid and exhausted from a sleepless
night, and the subsequent agitation of the morning, lay extended so
listlessly as might well confirm the worst fears of her hostess.
“Now, God forgive us our sins!” said the Lady of Lochleven, forgetting
her pride, and throwing herself on her knees by the side of the bed; “It
is too true--she is murdered!”
“Who is in the chamber?” said Mary, as if awaking from a heavy
sleep. “Seyton, Fleming, where are you? I heard a strange voice. Who
waits?--Call Courcelles.”
“Alas! her memory is at Holyrood, though her body is at
Lochleven.--Forgive, madam,” continued the Lady, “if I call your
attention to me--I am Margaret Erskine, of the house of Mar, by marriage
Lady Douglas of Lochleven.”
“Oh, our gentle hostess,” answered the Queen, “who hath such care of our
lodgings and of our diet--We cumber you too much and too long, good Lady
of Lochleven; but we now trust your task of hospitality is well-nigh
ended.”
“Her words go like a knife through my heart,” said the Lady of
Lochleven--“With a breaking heart, I pray your Grace to tell me what is
your ailment, that aid may be had, if there be yet time.”
“Nay, my ailment,” replied the Queen, “is nothing worth telling, or
worth a leech's notice--my limbs feel heavy--my heart feels cold--a
prisoner's limbs and heart are rarely otherwise--fresh air, methinks,
and freedom, would soon revive me; but as the Estates have ordered it,
death alone can break my prison-doors.”
“Were it possible, madam,” said the Lady, “that your liberty could
restore your perfect health, I would myself encounter the resentment of
the Regent--of my son, Sir William--of my whole friends, rather than you
should meet your fate in this castle.”
“Alas! madam,” said the Lady Fleming, who conceived the time propitious
to show that her own address had been held too lightly of; “it is but
trying what good freedom may work upon us; for myself, I think a free
walk on the greensward would do me much good at heart.”
The Lady of Lochleven rose from the bedside, and darted a penetrating
look at the elder valetudinary. “Are you so evil-disposed, Lady
Fleming?”
“Evil-disposed indeed, madam,” replied the court dame, “and more
especially since breakfast.”
“Help! help!” exclaimed Catherine, anxious to break off a conversation
which boded her schemes no good; “help! I say, help! the Queen is about
to pass away. Aid her, Lady Lochleven, if you be a woman!”
The Lady hastened to support the Queen's head, who, turning her eyes
towards her with an air of great languor, exclaimed, “Thanks, my dearest
Lady of Lochleven--notwithstanding some passages of late, I have never
misconstrued or misdoubted your affection to our house. It was proved,
as I have heard, before I was born.”
The Lady Lochleven sprung from the floor, on which she had again knelt,
and, having paced the apartment in great disorder, flung open the
lattice, as if to get air.
“Now, Our Lady forgive me!” said Catherine to herself. “How deep must
the love of sarcasm, be implanted in the breasts of us women, since the
Queen, with all her sense, will risk ruin rather than rein in her wit!”
She then adventured, stooping over the Queen's person, to press her
arm with her hand, saying, at the same time, “For God's sake, madam,
restrain yourself!”
“Thou art too forward, maiden,” said the Queen; but immediately added,
in a low whisper, “Forgive me, Catherine; but when I felt the hag's
murderous hands busy about my head and neck, I felt such disgust and
hatred, that I must have said something, or died. But I will be schooled
to better behaviour--only see that thou let her not touch me.”
“Now, God be praised!” said the Lady Lochleven, withdrawing her head
from the window, “the boat comes as fast as sail and oar can send wood
through water. It brings the leech and a female--certainly, from the
appearance, the very person I was in quest of. Were she but well out of
this castle, with our honour safe, I would that she were on the top of
the wildest mountain in Norway; or I would I had been there myself, ere
I had undertaken this trust.”
While she thus expressed herself, standing apart at one window, Roland
Graeme, from the other, watched the boat bursting through the waters
of the lake, which glided from its side in ripple and in foam. He, too,
became sensible, that at the stern was seated the medical Chamberlain,
clad in his black velvet cloak; and that his own relative, Magdalen
Graeme, in her assumed character of Mother Nieneven, stood in the bow,
her hands clasped together, and pointed towards the castle, and her
attitude, even at that distance, expressing enthusiastic eagerness to
arrive at the landing-place. They arrived there accordingly, and while
the supposed witch was detained in a room beneath, the physician
was ushered to the Queen's apartment, which he entered with all due
professional solemnity. Catherine had, in the meanwhile, fallen back
from the Queen's bed, and taken an opportunity to whisper to Roland,
“Methinks, from the information of the threadbare velvet cloak and the
solemn beard, there would be little trouble in haltering yonder ass. But
thy grandmother, Roland--thy grandmother's zeal will ruin us, if she get
not a hint to dissemble.”
Roland, without reply, glided towards the door of the apartment, crossed
the parlour, and safely entered the antechamber; but when he attempted
to pass farther, the word “Back! Back!” echoed from one to the other, by
two men armed with carabines, convinced him that the Lady of Lochleven's
suspicions had not, even in the midst of her alarms, been so far lulled
to sleep as to omit the precaution of stationing sentinels on her
prisoners. He was compelled, therefore, to return to the parlour, or
audience-chamber, in which he found the Lady of the castle in conference
with her learned leech.
“A truce with your cant phrase and your solemn foppery, Lundin,” in such
terms she accosted the man of art, “and let me know instantly, if thou
canst tell, whether this lady hath swallowed aught that is less than
wholesome?”
“Nay, but, good lady--honoured patroness--to whom I am alike bonds-man
in my medical and official capacity, deal reasonably with me. If this,
mine illustrious patient, will not answer a question, saving with sighs
and moans--if that other honourable lady will do nought but yawn in
my face when I inquire after the diagnostics--and if that other young
damsel, who I profess is a comely maiden--”
“Talk not to me of comeliness or of damsels,” said the Lady of
Lochleven, “I say, are they evil-disposed?--In one word, man, have they
taken poison, ay or no?”
“Poisons, madam,” said the learned leech, “are of various sorts. There
is your animal poison, as the lepus marinus, as mentioned by Dioscorides
and Galen--there are mineral and semi-mineral poisons, as those
compounded of sublimate regulus of antimony, vitriol, and the arsenical
salts--there are your poisons from herbs and vegetables, as the aqua
cymbalariae, opium, aconitum, cantharides, and the like--there are
also--”
“Now, out upon thee for a learned fool! and I myself am no better for
expecting an oracle from such a log,” said the Lady.
“Nay, but if your ladyship will have patience--if I knew what food they
have partaken of, or could see but the remnants of what they have last
eaten--for as to the external and internal symptoms, I can discover
nought like; for, as Galen saith in his second book _de Antidotis_--”
“Away, fool!” said the Lady; “send me that hag hither; she shall
avouch what it was that she hath given to the wretch Dryfesdale, or the
pilniewinks and thumbikins shall wrench it out of her finger joints!”
“Art hath no enemy unless the ignorant,” said the mortified Doctor;
veiling, however, his remark under the Latin version, and stepping apart
into a corner to watch the result.
In a minute or two Magdalen Graeme entered the apartment, dressed as we
have described her at the revel, but with her muffler thrown back, and
all affectation of disguise. She was attended by two guards, of whose
presence she did not seem even to be conscious, and who followed her
with an air of embarrassment and timidity, which was probably owing to
their belief in her supernatural power, coupled with the effect
produced by her bold and undaunted demeanour. She confronted the Lady of
Lochleven, who seemed to endure with high disdain the confidence of her
air and manner.
“Wretched woman!” said the Lady, after essaying for a moment to bear
her down, before she addressed her, by the stately severity of her look,
“what was that powder which thou didst give to a servant of this house,
by name Jasper Dryfesdale, that he might work out with it some slow and
secret vengeance?--Confess its nature and properties, or, by the honour
of Douglas, I give thee to fire and stake before the sun is lower!”
“Alas!” said Magdalen Graeme in reply, “and when became a Douglas or a
Douglas's man so unfurnished in his revenge, that he should seek them
at the hands of a poor and solitary woman? The towers in which your
captives pine away into unpitied graves, yet stand fast on their
foundation--the crimes wrought in them have not yet burst their
vaults asunder--your men have still their cross-bows, pistolets, and
daggers--why need you seek to herbs or charms for the execution of your
revenges?”
“Hear me, foul hag,” said the Lady Lochleven,--“but what avails speaking
to thee?--Bring Dryfesdale hither, and let them be confronted together.”
“You may spare your retainers the labour,” replied Magdalen Graeme.
“I came not here to be confronted with a base groom, nor to answer the
interrogatories of James's heretical leman--I came to speak with the
Queen of Scotland--Give place there!”
And while the Lady Lochleven stood confounded at her boldness, and at
the reproach she had cast upon her, Magdalen Graeme strode past her
into the bedchamber of the Queen, and, kneeling on the floor, made a
salutation as if, in the Oriental fashion, she meant to touch the earth
with her forehead.
“Hail, Princess!” she said, “hail, daughter of many a King, but
graced above them all in that thou art called to suffer for the true
faith--hail to thee, the pure gold of whose crown has been tried in the
seven-times heated furnace of affliction--hear the comfort which God
and Our Lady send thee by the mouth of thy unworthy servant.--But
first”--and stooping her head she crossed herself repeatedly, and,
still upon her knees, appeared to be rapidly reciting some formula of
devotion.
“Seize her, and drag her to the massy-more!--to the deepest dungeon with
the sorceress, whose master, the Devil, could alone have inspired her
with boldness enough to insult the mother of Douglas in his own castle!”
Thus spoke the incensed Lady of Lochleven, but the physician presumed to
interpose.
“I pray of you, honoured madam, she be permitted to take her course
without interruption. Peradventure we shall learn something concerning
the nostrum she hath ventured, contrary to law and the rules of art, to
adhibit to these ladies, through the medium of the steward Dryfesdale.”
“For a fool,” replied the Lady of Lochleven, “thou hast counselled
wisely--I will bridle my resentment till their conference be over.”
“God forbid, honoured Lady,” said Doctor Lundin, “that you should
suppress it longer--nothing may more endanger the frame of your honoured
body; and truly, if there be witchcraft in this matter, it is held by
the vulgar, and even by solid authors on Demonology, that three scruples
of the ashes of the witch, when she hath been well and carefully burned
at a stake, is a grand Catholicon in such matter, even as they prescribe
_crinis canis rabidi_, a hair of the dog that bit the patient, in cases
of hydrophobia. I warrant neither treatment, being out of the regular
practice of the schools; but, in the present case, there can be
little harm in trying the conclusion upon this old necromancer and
quacksalver-_fiat experimentum_ (as we say) _in corpore vili_.”
“Peace, fool!” said the Lady, “she is about to speak.”