THE WITCH-PRICKER.
"_Flam._ Malicious fortune!
_Ænob._ Now thou seest my meaning!"--_Boadicea._
The personage who appeared was a short, thickset, and bandy-legged
man, whose malformation his chocolate-coloured stockings and white
cloth breeches displayed to the utmost advantage. He had a neck and
chest like a bullock, with the sinister visage of a thorough-paced
ruffian. In size, his head and hands were altogether disproportioned
to his body; his hair, beard, and moustaches, which appeared to have
been preserved sacred from comb and scissors, were all woven into one
matted mass, which was of the deepest black; while drinking and
exposure to the weather had bronzed his skin to an almost oriental
blackness. He wore a plain frock or gaberdine of white Galloway
cloth, confined at the girdle by a broad calfskin belt and steel
buckle, in which he carried a long dirk or knife. He wore rough
brogues of brown leather on his broad splay feet, and a small rosary
of oak beads which dangled at his left wrist evinced his wish to be
deemed a respectable member of society; but arrogance, cunning, and
brutality, were powerfully depicted on his otherwise stolid visage,
which had a very repulsive squareness of aspect, two enormous ears,
and a great mastiff mouth.
This worthy was Nichol Birrel, the brodder or witch-pricker of the
newly-established high court of justiciary, one of the most
unscrupulous and atrocious ruffians that ever occupied this
important, and, in after years, lucrative situation.
Born and bred a vassal on the estate of the lord advocate, to whom he
was intensely devoted, he had obtained the place of prover or
witchfinder, as it peculiarly suited his ruffianly and sanguinary
disposition. Several other minor officials of the new court were,
like him, the immediate and devoted dependents of Redhall, for whom
they acted as bravos on a hundred occasions. Nichol, though cruel,
false, bitter, and treacherous to all the rest of mankind, was true,
faithful, and sincerely a friend to his lord and benefactor; for he
seemed to be possessed by the same instinct which attaches a
ferocious hound to the hand that feeds him.
"Od save us, my lord, ye look ill! Is there aught the matter wi'
ye?" he asked, gruffly.
"Nichol, is there none in attendance on me but thee?" asked the
advocate, without regarding his inquiry; "where are all the
servitors?"
"At the palace, seeing the merry masquers."
"Mass! where I should have been but for this accursed sickness,
which, to-night, hath fallen so heavily upon me. It matters not; I
am invited by the lord chamberlain to the fête to-morrow."
"Ye look worse to-night, Redhall, than I have seen ye since
Lententime."
"I am sick at heart, Nichol."
"I have been so at the stomach many a time and oft, when I mixed my
ale with usquebaugh, but as for the heart----"
"Psha!" exclaimed the advocate, starting abruptly, "either my brain
is under the influence of insanity, or there is a spell of sorcery
upon me."
"Dost suspect any ill-woman of being the cause thereof, Sir Adam?"
asked the brodder, whose eyes began to twinkle in anticipation of a
pricking fee, while his square mouth expanded into a grin.
"No, no; I spoke but in metaphor, and suspect none." He paused.
"Thou sawest the procession to-day?"
Nichol nodded his vast head affirmatively.
"Didst mark any man there whom ye knew to be my enemy?"
"I marked his eminence the cardinal, who confined a damosel of yours,
among his other ladies, in the auld tower of Creich."
"Tush!"
"I observed the lord abbot of the Holy Cross, who won his plea
against thee anent the duty on every cart entering the barriers of
the town."
"Thou triflest! didst mark no one else?"
"Well, then, I marked the master of the king's ordnance, shining in
cloth of gold and crammasie."
"Good!--anything more?"
"I saw him smile as he curveted, in his bravery, past the ladies of
Ashkirk," replied Nichol, with a cunning leer, while the advocate
gnashed his teeth; "and sweetly the lady Jane smiled on him again.
It was a braw sight and a brave; and a gude ransom the master's
doublet and foot-cloth would have been to any bold fellow that met
him in the gloaming by Leith Loan or the Burghmuir; for they were
pure cloth-of-gold, and champit with pearls, so that I marvel not the
Lady Seton smiled so brightly; for, if love maketh a woman's eye
bright, gold will make it brighter."
"Thou art a mercenary slave!" said the advocate, bitterly; "and never
felt the passion of which thou talkest so glibly. Nichol, have I not
been to thee ever a friend rather than a lord and master--kind,
indulgent, and liberal----"
"When service was to be performed," said Nichol, parenthetically,
closing one of his yellow eyes with another hideous leer.
"At all times, Nichol," continued the king's advocate, striking his
heel sharply on the ground. "Thou knowest that the master of the
ordnance and I have long been at deadly feud about--but it recks not
thee about what."
"Say Jane Seton of Ashkirk, my lord, and you will shoot near the
mark."
Redhall's eyes flashed, and he made a fierce gesture of impatience,
for he disliked to hear her name in the mouth of this ruffian, whom
he despised while he fed and fostered him.
"It is enough, Nichol Birrel--thou understandest me--the master of
the ordnance bars my way; this must not be, and shall not be."
There was a pause.
"Well, Sir Adam?" growled the pricker.
"Thou hast thy poniard," said the knight, hoarsely.
"Ay," replied the ruffian, as a broad grin expanded his mastiff
mouth, and his great teeth appeared like a row of fangs through his
matted beard; "ay, the same gude knife with which I slew Maclellan,
the Knight of Bombie, at the north door of St. Giles's kirk. By one
backhanded stroke I dashed it into his heart, and he fell with his
rosary in his uplifted hand, the name of God on his lips, and the
half-signed cross on his brow, yet they saved him not."
There was a pause, for Birrel, who had commenced, in a tone of
ruffian irony, ended in a dismal quaver, and grew pale.
"Wretch and fool!" cried the lord advocate, "why remind me of that?"
He gave his dependent a terrible glance.
"I crave pardon, Sir Adam; but when I bethink me that this Sir Thomas
of Bombie had the lairds of Achlane, Glenshannoch, and Bourg, with
nine other knights of his surname to avenge him, I surely ran some
risk."
"The Lords of Drumlanrig and Lochinvar were said, by common rumour,
to have slain him, and so let it be; he was a foe of the house of
Otterburn," hissed the advocate through his teeth, "and of the
faction to which that house adhered; a foe to me in particular, and
as such must Vipont, the accursed Vipont, die."
Nichol uttered a sound between a growl and a laugh.
"Are Dobbie the doomster, and Sanders the torturer below? I warrant
they will be snoring, like gorged hounds, by the kitchen ingle."
"No, they are birling their cans in the buttery."
"Then see to this affair; but dost think we can rely on them?"
"Like myself, Sir Adam, they and their forbears have been leal men
and true to the house of Redhall, and wherefore would they fail it
now? We are the servants of the law, and what matters it whether we
string this soldier of the king in a tow at the cross, or pink him in
the dark? 'tis death, any way;" and here the fellow uttered a
ferocious laugh again.
"For your own sakes and mine be secret, sincere, and sure."
The pricker touched his knife, bowed, and raising the arras, dropped
it again, and shaking his matted head, paused irresolutely.
"What is it now?" asked Redhall, taking the purse from his girdle.
"Money?"
"No, no, Sir Adam, I never served ye for siller, but as my bounden
duty; so I crave leave to remind ye that the place of forester up at
Kinleith and Bonallie is vacant, and my sister's son, Tom Trotter, a
deadly shot with bow and hackbut----"
"Enough; thy sister's son shall have the place of forester; and, for
thee, methinks that the master's cloth-of-gold and diamond baldrick
might serve for that, and to procure absolution to boot for the three
of ye."
"We care not for that, Sir Adam," replied the pricker, "for we are
among those who have seen the new light."
"And believe not in the delegated power of the priesthood; eh, is it
so?"
Birrel nodded.
"Then why carriest thou that great rosary. I vow it looks like a
fetter on thy wrist."
"As a blind."
"Lollards, Wickliffites--ha! ha! these new preachers of schism and
heresy have made three creditable proselytes; yet, for thy soul's
sake, Nichol (and there was a very perceptible sneer in the
advocate's face as he said this), I hope thou art a true Catholic at
heart; but away to thy comrades, for the night wears on, and Vipont
hath not yet left the house of the Setons, for I have not heard the
hoofs of his horse. To-morrow," continued Redhall, with a ghastly
expression of ferocity, "to-morrow----"
"He shall be either in Catholic purgatory or Protestant hell,"
grinned the pricker, as he raised the arras and retired.
The ghastly smile yet played upon the thin lips of Redhall.
"To-morrow I shall be freed of these fears, and for ever," he mused;
"but at no distant period I must rid me of those three bloodhounds,
who have stuck like burs to my skirts since first I took upon me this
unhappy office of advocate to the king. Ha, and so they are
heretics! Let them serve my purpose in this, and ere another week
hath passed the cardinal shall have them under his inquisitorial
eyes, and the stake will rid me and society of them for ever.
Vipont, beware thee, now, for this night shall be the darkest in the
calendar for thee and for thine!"