about to descend, when by some "glamour" he mistook the way; for
being supperless, I am convinced that the hot wine had affected his
head; he stumbled against a door; it flew open, and he found himself
in the dressing apartment of a lady, whose face was turned towards
him, and by the lights on a side-table he perceived at a glance that
she was the same queenly dame who had recently crossed the
landing-place. She gazed fixedly at the amazed intruder, as she
stood before a mirror, with her round polished shoulders turned
towards him, and her jet black hair gathered up in heavy masses on
her slender fingers, for she seemed in the act of dressing it. From
a faultless bust, her dark dress, brocaded with stars, hung in
magnificent folds to her feet, where, crouching like a marmoset, the
hideous little dwarf was sitting. Her figure was beautiful, but so
motionless and still, as she gazed with eyes full of indignation and
inquiry, that the words of apology hung half arrested on the lips of
the bowing intruder, who, in another moment, discovered that he had
before him a--picture--only a picture; but one painted in the first
style of antique art.
Nothing artistic could be more beautifully executed than the upturned
and polished arms, from which the lace that foreign looms must have
woven, hung in loops upheld by diamonds. A necklace of precious
stones encircled her neck, and a large band of the same formed a
coronet round her head, and gave an imperial grace to her lofty
beauty of feature and of form.
The captain gazed on it till the figure appeared to come forward and
the canvas to recede, till the eyes seemed to fill with light and the
proud lips to curl with a scornful smile; and then he turned away,
for the strange picture bad a mysterious effect upon him, and hastily
he sought the hall, where a hot and savoury supper smoked on the
centre table, and where the bailie or castellan of the absent
proprietor impatiently awaited him.
"Come awa, sir--come awa; I thought you meant to bide up-stairs a'
night. Here are hot collops, devilled turkey, stewed kidneys, mulled
claret, port, sherry, and whisky toddy--draw in a chair, sir, and
make yourself at hame."
"I have a hawk's appetite, bailie," said my kinsman, applying himself
assiduously to the devil and the sherry.
"And I ditto, double--for I have ridden in from Stirling market
to-day; try the cold gibelotte pie."
"Thank you; I'll rather stick to my old friend--a devilled bone
smacks of the bivouac. Pass the sherry, bailie. Thank you."
"Try the kidneys; they would serve a king."
"Thanks. By the bye, who is that noble lady now residing here?"
"Noble lady?" reiterated the bailie, looking up with his mouth full,
and surprise in his flushed face.
"Yes; she whom I passed, or rather who passed me, on the staircase
to-night." The bailie pushed back his chair and plate.
"A lady, sir!" he stammered, while his eyes opened wider.
"She in the black dress brocaded with white stars."
"Gude hae mercy on us!--and a dwarf holding up her tail?"
"The same."
"The Lord take us a' into his holy keeping! Ye have seen _her_?"
"Seen who? What the devil do you mean?"
"_The wife of the Red Comyn!_"
"Come, that is good; but I am too old a soldier, bailie, to believe
all this."
"Keep us frae harm!" continued the old man, as his rubicund visage
grew pale, and he glanced stealthily over his shoulder while lowering
his voice; "she hasna' been seen for these ten years past; heaven
send it portends nae evil to our family!"
"Our family," meant the house; so completely were the old Scottish
domestics identified with those they served.
"Lord help you, sir," he continued, draining a hot jug of toddy
almost at a draught; "you have seen a wandering spirit."
"It may have been fancy, bailie; but I certainly saw her picture, and
that is tangible enough."
"That picture was painted two hundred years and mair after her death;
and there is a devilish story connected with it too."
"'Pon my honour, bailie, you quite interest me," said the captain,
brewing a jug of smoking toddy, and drawing a chair nearer to the
fire; "the atmosphere of this place becomes full of diablerie.
Painted two hundred years _after_ her death! I hope the likeness is
good; but tell me all about it."
"She was the wife of the last Comyn to whom this castle belonged, and
she was a woman possessing alike the pride and temper of Lucifer; but
they cost her dear, for she suffered a sore penance in the yellow
bedchamber up-stairs, and there 'tis said her spirit walks to this
hour. Now it chanced that in the days of King James IV., his Master
Painter, the famous Sir Thomas Galbraith, the pupil of Quentin
Matsys, of Antwerp, and the friend of Leonardo da Vinci and of Titian
Vecelli, came here during the lifetime of John Lord Fleming--the same
who was so barbarously assassinated by the cursed Laird o'
Drummelzier, wi' whose folk we have a feud outstanding yet, like an
auld debt--well, the King's painter slept, or rather, perhaps, passed
the night in the yellow room, and from that time he was a changed
man; from being rosy-faced, he became pale and wan, hollow-eyed and
ghastly; from being as full of fun and frolic as the King himself, he
became sad, woful and thoughtful, and he shut himself up in the
haunted-room, where he worked day and night for a whole week, without
eating, drinking, or sleeping, as folks aver, until _that_ awful
picture was finished; and whether it was done from the memory of
_one_ vision of the spirit, or whether the wife of the Red Comyn came
to him nightly from hell, and sat for her portrait, I cannot say; but
when finished by Sir Thomas Galbraith, it was the last work he did on
earth, for he was found dead, seated before it, one morning, with a
pallet on his left thumb and a brush in his right hand. Terror was
on his dead face, and the marks of strangulation were round his
throat; so the Flemings buried him in the auld Kirk of St. Ninian, at
the Oxgang, where his grave is yet to be seen. I would fain have the
picture burned, but the family set a high value upon it; yet I verily
believe, if a puir presumptuous auld carle like me dare judge o' sic
things, that its presence here may keep the spirit o' that awfu'
woman hovering about the walls o' the auld castle she rendered
accursed by her crimes!"
"Well, bailie, tell me the story and----"
"Mak' another browst o' toddy while the water is hot, sir," replied
the castellan, as he stirred up the fire with an enormous poker, and
as the flames roared in the tunnel-like chimney, the red sparks flew
up in pyramids.
"I am charged to the brim," said the captain; "so fire away, my
friend, I am all impatience."
After a few preliminary hems, coughs, and flourishes, with sips of
toddy between, the bailie told the captain the following strange
story, which I give in my own words, being vain enough to prefer them
to his.
--------
In the beginning of the fourteenth century, the Castle of
Kirkintulloch was the principal residence of John Comyn Lord of
Badenoch, who, as nephew of King John Baliol, was a competitor with
Bruce for the crown of Scotland, and he was called the Red Comyn to
distinguish him from his father, the Black Comyn, who was so named
from his swarthy complexion.
In those days the country around this castle was covered by forests
of oak and pine, through the secluded hollows of which the Kelvin and
the Logie crept with that slow and sluggish current which gives them
more the aspect of Flemish canals than streams that roll from
Scottish mountains. The rising burgh was then roofed with stone, or
thatched; the Roman fort on the Barhill was nearly entire, as when a
thousand years before the soldiers of the Cæsars had relinquished it
before the furious Scots; and the now ruined tower of Sir Robert
Boyd, Baron of Kilmarnock, Hartshaw, Ardneil and Dalry, was still the
stronghold of his family, who were the sworn enemies of the Baliols
and all their adherents. So deep, indeed, was their hatred, that
they would not bury their dead in the same church; thus, while the
Boyds were laid in the Chapel of St. Mary (which is now the parish
kirk), the Comyns were interred in the Church of St. Ninian.
The Red Comyn was powerful, cunning, and dissembling; being
ambitious, and though he fought under Wallace at Falkirk, intensely
selfish, he feared to lose his estates after that disastrous battle
was lost; and as usual with Scottish nobles, considering his own
interest before the common weal or the national honour, he joined the
English ranks, and fought against his own country in the army of the
traitor-king, John Baliol.
He was a woful tyrant to the burgh of Kirkintulloch; for, in defiance
of the old laws of the land, he enforced the bludewit, the
stingisdynt, the marchet, the herezeld, and other exactions now
unknown within the ports of a Scottish town; and as all pleas between
burgesses and travelling merchants must be settled before the third
flowing and ebbing of the tide, he usually decided them by whipping
the burgess and confiscating the goods of the stranger. Moreover,
although it had been ordained by the kings of old, that on any
burgess departing on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land or other sacred
place, his goods and family should be protected "vntill God brought
him name againe," the wives of the absent were often seized by Comyn,
and their goods by his lady.
At his mills he exacted exorbitant mulctures, and he hung all who
dared to complain; if any ventured to grind wheat, mashloch, or rye
with hand querns, they were also hanged; and though it was statute
and ordained that he who stole a halfpenny-worth of bread should be
scourged, that he who stole a pair of shoes should be pilloried, or
eightpence worth should have one leg cut off, the tyrant hanged them
all. Thus his Dule-tree was never without a man hanging from it,
with the black gleds flying round him; for Comyn ground alike to the
dust the burgesses within the walls and the gudemen of the Newland
Mailings without; so that it was generally said in Dumbartonshire,
that the devil himself would be a gentler overlord than he; and he
was so hated that men remembered the dreadful fate of his father in
Badenoch, and it came to be whispered about that there was a prophecy
made by a weird woman, that he too should _die a violent death_!
His wife, Lady Gwendoleyne, was esteemed one of the most beautiful
women in Scotland, and none had outshone her at the Court of Queen
Yolande, the consort of Alexander III. Lovely beyond all comparison,
tall, stately and magnificent in form, with pale commanding features
and dark eyes, indicative rather of pride of birth and loftiness of
mind than of gentleness, she made the people--even those whom her
beauty dazzled, and her slightest smile would have won for
ever--shrink and quail before her, as beneath the eye of some
mysterious spirit; for the keen black eye of that imperious lady is
said to have been as dangerous in its beauty as it was terrible in
its expression.
She had been wedded early to the Red Lord of Badenoch; they had three
daughters, the youngest of whom (according to Andrew Wyntoun) was
married to the traitorous MacDougal of Lorn. They had also one son,
who at the time this history opens, A.D. 1306, was in his eighteenth
year, and was said to be a handsome, gallant, and high-spirited
youth; but, unfortunately, devoted to the false Baliol, at whose mock
Court in the Castle of Perth he resided, and there he had been
educated.
Notwithstanding her own unparalleled beauty, her husband's rank,
power, and overweening authority, Lady Gwendoleyne was far from being
happy! A thorn sharper than a poisoned arrow rankled in her heart,
in the form of a restless jealousy of her husband, to whom she was
passionately devoted, and whom she loved with all the ardour of her
impulsive nature. And though he seemed to be, in manner, all that
befitted a faithful and attached spouse, he was yet an object of
suspicion to Gwendoleyne; for some artful minion had skilfully sown
the seeds of mistrust between them, and several of Comyn's unguarded
actions and interferences with the wives of pilgrim-burgesses had
given her every reason to deem her fears were just and true; hence
her fiery heart became a prey to furious passions and to bitter
thoughts, and she looked about her, longing for some fitting object
on which to vent her wrath.
Her husband's kinsman and her own dear friend, old Sir Alexander
Baliol of Cavers, Great Chamberlain of Scotland, to whom she often
hinted her complaints against Comyn and her suspicions of his
infidelity, endeavoured to laugh away her fears.
"Madam," said he, on one occasion, "jealousy is the soul of a love
which will brook no rival even for a moment. I mean not to hint that
you love Red Comyn too much, but without this jealousy your love for
him perhaps would die."
"You are too subtle a casuist for a woman, Sir Alexander of Cavers,"
replied the lady, cresting up her beautiful head; "but you must be
aware that the disposition and manners of Comyn, your kinsman, are at
least but too well calculated to excite my suspicion and distrust.
To wit: his passionate and unconcealed admiration for female beauty;
this is known over the whole country, and thrice, on vague suspicion,
I have had to discard certain ladies of my household, and thus make
their families deadly enemies of ours. And say, my good Lord
Chamberlain, are these wandering sallies not shameful, when
perpetrated by one who has a son now in his eighteenth year, and tall
and handsome as himself?"
Sir Alexander thought of Comyn's gigantic red beard, and smiled when
remembering the handsome youth, who had all his mother's beauty,
without his father's ferocity of aspect and bearing.
"You smile, Sir Alexander!" said the fiery dame. "You smile--'tis
very well, sir! You know more of the Red Comyn and his secrets than
you care to tell me, and that courtier's smile assures me that I am
an injured wife----"
"I beg to assure you, Lady of Badenoch----"
"Assure me of nothing, Lord of Cavers, if you cannot assure me of
your kinsman's faith and purity."
"Madam," said the old Lord Chamberlain, testily, "there are two kinds
of jealousy--a pure fear by which the young and restless lover is
animated--and a grovelling suspicion, which is jealousy in the worst
sense of the term. Your suspicion wounds your self-esteem--it piques
your honour--and is but a new phase of selfishness, for you suspect
yourself an injured woman."
"And justly too, for Comyn's coldness to me during the last month
cannot be accounted for but by some new fancy."
"Your husband is never jealous of _you_, madam."
"That only proves his indifference. 'Tis shamel, false, and
unknightly; and I only trust that the presence of our boy, the young
Sir John, whom the King has just knighted, will in some degree recal
my wandering husband to a sense of his own honour and the honour of
his wife and daughters."
"Madam, how often shall I assure you that the husband of one so
beautiful as you could never prove false--I am an old man, your
father's friend, and may well say this."
"True, you are an old man, and were my father's friend," resumed the
lady, whose black eyes flashed with dusky fire through their tears;
"thus it is the more culpable in you to be in my husband's wicked
secrets, and endeavouring thus to blind and to deceive a loving and
devoted wife. But woe to Comyn and to you in that hour when I prove
the falsehood of you both!"
And gathering up her long silk kirtle, which was worn without
sleeves, but was so long in the skirt as constantly to require
upholding by one hand, she swept away with the air of an offended
queen, and with her long and magnificent hair floating over her
shoulders from under a band of burnished gold.
"Alas!" thought the old chamberlain, shrugging his shoulders, "how
true it is, that love being jealous, maketh a good eye look asquint."
In those days maidens of good family were received into the houses of
ladies of high rank to be delicately nurtured and well educated; for
which, strange as it may now seem, a befitting fee or pension was
paid. Now, among the ladies of the _tabourette_, or _dames
d'honneur_ of the Lady of Badenoch, were the daughters of many noble
houses of the Baliol faction, and who were consequently false to
their country. Thus she had Margaret, daughter of that Lord
Abernethy who basely accepted from the English King a commission as
Captain-General of the Scottish rebels; Muriel, daughter of Sir
Gilbert de Umphreville, the forfeited Earl of Angus; Isabel, daughter
of David Lord Brechin, who was accused of a design to betray Berwick
to the English; Rosamond and Alice, the daughters of John Comyn, Earl
of Buchan, and Lord High Constable of Scotland, another prime traitor
of the Baliol faction; and Yolande, daughter of William de Gifford,
Lord of Yester, in East Lothian. All these were beautiful girls,
and, save the last, were proud, haughty, and reserved; for their
manners and bearing were all modelled exactly after those of Lady
Comyn. Yolande de Gifford, whose father, though a lord, had, strange
to say, been true to Scotland, was an orphan, and had been taken into
the Castle of Kirkintulloch at the request of Bernard, Abbot of
Arbroath, the Lord Chancellor, and almost in pity, as all her
father's lands in the shire of Haddington had been seized by John
Baliol. She was the most beautiful of Gwendoleyne's attendants, and
perhaps the most reserved and gentle, for she felt herself friendless
and alone among the selfish courtiers of the Scottish King. Blue
eyed, golden haired, and softly skinned, Yolande, who had been so
named after her godmother, the late queen (Yolande, Countess de
Dreux), was, indeed, the most gentle and loveable of all gentle
creatures, and she shrank under the bold black eyes of Lady
Gwendoleyne, as a sensitive plant might shrink beneath a hot sun, or
before the keen north wind.
Yolande, when the tresses of her rich hair were gathered in the
golden crespinette then worn by ladies of the Scottish Court, to show
the contour of the neck and shoulders; when her blue kirtle, with its
tight sleeves, displayed her beautiful form, over which floated her
surquayne or velvet mantle, tied with tassels at each shoulder,
looked only second in beauty to Lady Comyn herself, for they were
nearly of a height; and her pretty white fingers were the most expert
of all the ladies there at the weaving of those endless waves of
tapestry at which all noble demoiselles then worked daily for the
comfort and decoration of their dwellings and churches. Such was
then the industrious custom; and we are told that Matilda, Queen of
William the Conqueror of England, sewed with her own fair hands
sixty-seven yards representing the history of the Conquest of South
Britain, beginning with Harold's embassy to the Norman Court, and
ending with his death at Hastings.
After a long absence at King Edward's Court in London, Red Comyn
returned to Scotland, which was then groaning under the yoke of the
infamous King John Baliol, the tool of the English, and a faction of
traitorous Scottish nobles. On arriving at his home, he gave
presents to all the ladies of his household--to one a necklace, to
another a bracelet, a crespinette, a brooch, and so forth; but to
Yolande de Gifford he gave a golden ring.
_A ring!_
The restless suspicions of his lady had now discovered a clue to
something real and tangible; and now she had an object on which her
vague jealousies could settle with security. Yolande de Gifford, the
playmate of her absent son--the viper whom she had taken into her
bosom at the entreaty of the cunning Abbot Bernard, was doubtless
involved with her husband in one of those intrigues which had
embittered her whole life, although she had never been able to detect
them or discover solid proofs.
"Let me be wary and watch well," said she to herself; "should it be
so, by the cross that stood on Calvary, my Lord of Badenoch shall pay
dear for his fair-haired toy!"
Iago's words have been quoted a thousand times, and none are more
true; for
"Trifles light as air
Are to the jealous, confirmation strong
As proofs of holy writ.....
Dangerous conceits are in their natures poisons,
Which, at the first, are scarce found to distaste,
But, with a little act upon the blood,
Burn like the mines of sulphur."
Lady Comyn suddenly discovered that the timid Yolande had been
abstracted and thoughtful, neglectful of her apportioned duties, and
inattentive alike to the conversation of her companions and the
commands of her mistress. Was not this a sign of love and of secret
thoughts? She frequently and bitterly reprimanded her, till even the
gentle Yolande could not forget that she was the Lord Yester's only
daughter, and replied with honest pride and proper spirit, asserting
her own position and rank.
"This insolence and hauteur are alike unbecoming," said Lady
Gwendoleyne; "and you shall be banished, minion, from my hall and
bower, though the poorest convent in Scotland be your portionless
home!"
And assuredly this harsh threat would have been put in execution, but
for the determined intervention of the Red Comyn, whose kindness to
the orphan increased with his haughty wife's displeasure; and so she
set her little black dwarf, who was dumb, to watch Yolande
constantly. This dwarf was a present from Sir Thomas of Charteris,
the famous Red Rover and pirate, who afterwards became Lord of
Kinfouns, and was conquered on the high seas by William Wallace.
About the time that great preparations were making for the return of
her son, the young Sir John Comyn, whom--whether the youth was so
disposed or not---she meant to wed to his cousin, Alicia Comyn,
daughter of the Lord High Constable, she was again imparting her
griefs to Sir Alexander of Cavers.
"Comyn goeth from bad to worse; he braves me now, and dares to keep
his minion here, whether I will it or no. By God's teeth, sir, could
I but discover aught to prove my suspicions right, I'd slay that
pale-faced Yolande with Red Comyn's own dagger!"
"I beseech you, lady, to compose yourself, and to be assured that
your suspicions are alike unjust and cruel; for they malign your
husband and crush this friendless maiden to the dust."
"I tell you that I hate her!" responded the imperious dame, grinding
her beautiful teeth, while her magnificent eyes flashed fire.
"Then get her married," said the Chamberlain of Scotland, pithily.
"Who in these selfish times will be mad enough to wed the penniless
daughter of a forfeited house? Who would ask her love?"
"I for one, were I young as herself; but let her seek a husband
according to the ancient law."
"Sir Alexander, you mock me again."
"Heaven forbid, fair kinswoman; I do but remind you of an Act of
Parliament passed in the reign of the late Queen Margaret."
"Pshaw--the Maid of Norway--well?"
"Anent spinsters, like this Yolande."
"Well--well," continued Gwendoleyne, stamping her pretty foot.
"In 1288, it was statute and ordained, 'that during the reign of her
Most Blessed Majesty, _ilk maiden ladye of baith high and lowe estate
shall have libertie to bespeak ye man she likes_: albeit, if he
refuses to take her to be his wyf, he shall be mulctit of ye sum of
one hundred pounds or less, as his estate may be, except and alwais,
if he can make it appear that he is betrothit to ane ither woman,
when he shall be free."
"Yolande is proud as myself, for she comes of a race that would not
stoop their crests to kings; and this is but mockery, my Lord
Chamberlain, so--but what is this now?"
At that moment the little black dwarf crept close to her side, pulled
her skirt, and pointed towards the chamber of Yolande Gifford. The
yellow glossy eyes of the stunted negro gleamed with malevolent
light, as, snatching up her train, the lady swept out of the hall;
and the Chamberlain shrugged his shoulders and blessed his stars that
he was still a bachelor, while he whistled merrily, and resumed his
employment of teaching a hawk to shake its little bells and coquette
with its wings.
With all her pride and spirit, her furious will and temper, so
completely had the demon of jealousy taken possession of her soul,
that Gwendoleyne stooped to the humility of eavesdropping; and on
hearing the murmur of voices whispering in the chamber of Yolande,
she crept close to the thick arras that covered the door, and
listened with all her soul in her ears.
"Go, I implore you," she heard Yolande say, in a stifled voice;
"alas! if you are discovered here, what will my tyrannical mistress
say?"
"Just what she pleases," replied a voice, and then there was a
sound--a kiss--which set the listener's blood on fire.
"I am watched by that hateful imp her dwarf, and live in daily terror
of her discovering all," continued the sobbing Yolande; "and you know
what her views are concerning yourself. Go--go--John Comyn, for the
love of God and Saint Mary, go!"
"_John Comyn!_" muttered lady Gwendoleyne; "oh, wretch! that I had a
dagger here to avenge this double perfidy!"
A pause ensued.
"To-morrow evening be it, then--at the Roman Peel," said a low voice.
"When the moon is over Campsie Fells."
"You will not forget, beloved Yolande."
"Oh, no--no; and let that meeting be our last, for another day will
change the face of everything," wept Yolande.