THIRST!
"'Twas thou, O love! whose dreaded shafts control,
The hind's rude heart, and tear the hero's soul;
Thou ruthless power, with bloodshed never cloyed,
'Twas thou thy lovely votary destroyed:
Thy thirst still burning for a deeper woe,
In vain for thee the tears of beauty flow."
_The Lusiad of_ CAMOENS.
Aware that he had been seen by the friar in the act of listening, the
lord advocate decided in a moment upon the course to pursue. He
resolved that the promised pardon should never reach Edinburgh; but
being too wary to make any reference to the conversation he had just
heard, after simply giving the great cardinal a paper concerning an
annual subsidy from the clergy, which was to be presented to James V.
at Falkland on the morrow, he retired, and hastened to his own house
in the Canongate, where, with the utmost impatience, he awaited the
return of Nichol Birrel, whom, with Dobbie and Sanders Screw, he had
sent on a devilishly contrived mission to the Castle of Edinburgh,
whither we shall return to observe them.
From his window Roland had seen them enter David's Tower by the iron
gate at the bottom of the stair, by which they ascended straight to
the chamber where Jane Seton was confined.
After the priest had left her, the latter had become more calm,
though St. Bernard had not held out to her the faintest hope of mercy
or compassion from those powers which had abandoned her to die, or of
rescue from that once terrible faction to which her family
belonged--that faction now so scattered, crushed, and broken.
In her prison this sad and lonely being had watched the woods and
water darkening far below her; had watched the stars as one by one
they sparkled out upon the night; and she envied the airy freedom of
the passing clouds as they rolled through the sky--the blue twilight
sky of a still and beautiful summer gloaming. In masses of fleecy
white on pale gold, as they were tinted by the rising moon, they
sailed on the soft west wind in a thousand changing forms.
The very weariness of long grief overcame her, and she lay down on
the humble pallet afforded her by the orders of the castellan, to
sleep--for she had not slumbered during many nights, and on this
night, like her thirst, her fatigue was excessive.
Her couch was a mere paillasse, with a pillow; for in everything she
was made to feel painfully that she was the--condemned witch!
The bread given her during the two past days had been unusually salt
and bitter; she endured great thirst; but the warder had removed the
humble vessel that contained the water for her use, and now, without
a drop to moisten her parched lips, she lay down to sleep. Her bread
had been purposely salted to excess, and thus, having been many hours
without a drop of water, her sufferings were greatly increased; and
when she slept there arose before her visions of streams pouring in
white foam, of verdant banks or moss-green rocks, of fountains that
gushed and sparkled in marble basins, which most tantalizingly
receded or vanished when joyfully she attempted to drink of them. At
other times her kind old mother or Roland Vipont, with their
well-remembered smiles of love, approached her with cups of water or
of wine; but these dear forms faded away when the longed-for beverage
touched her lips; and then she started and awoke to solace herself
with her bitter tears--the only solace of which the cruel authorities
could not deprive her.
She slept lightly, as a bird sleeps on its perch; but not so lightly
as to hear her prison door opened by the Messrs. Birrel, Dobbie, and
Screw, whose faces were made more villanous and sinister by the
yellow rays of an oil-lamp, which darted upwards upon them. Birrel's
visage, square and mastiff in aspect, livid in colour, and surrounded
by a forest of sable hair above and below; Dobbie, with the eyes and
moustaches of a cat; and Sanders Screw, though utterly destitute of
any such appendages to his mouth, exhibiting in his nut-cracker jaws
and bleared eyes a sardonic grin of cruelty and intoxication.
He carried a large Flemish jar, which, strange to say, was brimful of
pure cold _water_.
Birrel raised his lamp, the lurid flame of which made yet more livid
his yellow visage and ruffian eyes; and its sickly rays fell on the
face of Jane; but the calm and divine smile that played upon her thin
and parted lips, failed to scare from their purpose these demons,
hardened as they were in every species of judicial cruelty.
Jane was dreaming of her lover, and in her self-embodied thoughts
originated that beautiful smile.
Softly, but soundly, after all she had endured, this poor victim of
superstition and revenge was sleeping now, and dreaming fondly and
joyously--for in a dream every sensation is a thousand times more
acute than it could be in reality--dreaming of that long life which
was denied her, on this earth at least; she felt on her cheek the
kiss of her young and gallant lover; she saw his waving plume and his
doublet of cloth-of-gold; his voice was in her ear, and it murmured
of his faith and love, that, like her own, would never die.
Her lips unclosed--an exclamation of rapture would have escaped her,
when Birrel's iron fingers grasped her tender arm--and she awoke with
a start and a cry of despair.
"Gude e'en to ye, cummer Jean," said he, insolently; "byde ye wauken,
or fare ye waur; for gif ye sleep, see, madam the sorceress," and he
shook before her eyes the steel brod, or needle, which was the badge
of his hateful office.
Seated upon one side of her bed, Jane recoiled from these men, who
regarded her with eyes that to her seemed as those of rattlesnakes,
for they were pitiless in heart, and merciless as the waves of the
sea.
We know not if we possess the power to describe the passages of that
night in the vaulted chamber of David's Tower.
In the days of the witch-mania in Scotland it was the custom, at the
desire of the lord president of the college of justice, of the lord
advocate, of the sheriff, or baillie of baron, or regality, or
whoever had tried and condemned a sorceress to subject her (even
after trial) to a further ordeal; for no persecution, even unto the
last hour, was deemed too severe for those unhappy beings who were
accused of the imaginary crime of selling their souls to Satan, and
thus irrevocably dooming themselves to a punishment that was
everlasting.
Two of the most favourite modes of prolonged tortured were, to
prevent the prisoner from sleeping by every device that the most
infernal ingenuity could suggest, and to feed them on bread salted
most liberally, to produce an intense thirst, to assuage which the
least drop of water was denied them.
Under this treatment many became insane, for the kirk sessions
carried it to the most ferocious excess in the seventeenth century.
On being awakened, and partially recovering from her terror, Jane's
first sensation was an inordinate desire for water; her thirst was
excessive. Her tongue was parched and painful, for her food during
the two past days had been coarse dry wheaten bannocks, rendered
bitter by the plentiful supply of salt used in their composition.
She had been too much accustomed to the most cruel and unceremonious
intrusions, to express her keen sense of the present one, otherwise
than by her flashing eyes and dilated nostrils, for her heart swelled
with indignation; but, on perceiving the jar in the hands of Sanders
Screw, her first thought was to satisfy her thirst, and she implored
them to give her a cup of water.
At this plaintive request, a grin spread over the weasel visage of
Screw and the cat-like eyes of Dobbie, while Birrel, who was somewhat
intoxicated, replied with his habitual tone of insolence--
"By my faith, cummer Jean, ye shall be thirstier and drouthier than
even was I in Douglasdale, ere a drop rins ower your craig."
Screw set down the jar, placing himself between it and their victim.
The lamp was also placed on the floor, and seating themselves around
it, Dobbie produced from his wide trunk hose of buckram a pack of
dirty and dog-eared cards. Each worthy official then placed beside
him a flask of usquebaugh, the cards were dealt round, and the
campaign of the night commenced with an old game at which the three
might play, and Birrel could cheat to his heart's content,
notwithstanding that Dobbie knew the backs as well as the front of
his favourite pack of cards.
For a time Jane gazed at them with the same startled and dismayed
expression that the sudden appearance of three reptiles might have
excited; and again she begged a cup of water, for her thirst (which
had been increasing the live-long day, and to which her salted food,
the drugs of the physician, and the grief that preyed upon her, all
alike conduced) had now attained a degree of torture and intensity
which hitherto she could not have conceived.
Her entreaties were replied to with laughter; and it seemed as if the
sight of the liberal draughts imbibed by the trio from their flasks
increased the desire of the poor captive; but her prayers and tears
were unheeded, and noisily the game went on.
Two hours passed thus!
The players had drained their flasks, and amid much cursing,
quarrelling and vociferation, the loose change had rapidly passed
from hand to hand, until the whole, amounting to somewhere about ten
crowns, a few fleur-de-lis groats, and white pennies of James III.,
were lodged in the pouch of Birrel, who trimmed the lamp with his
fingers, and offered a brass bodle to each of his companions that the
game might begin anew; but, as the cards were being redealt, he
perceived that, despite their brutal uproar, overcome by weariness
and torture of mind and body, the unhappy girl had again fallen into
an uneasy slumber.
Upon this the brodder arose with a growl, and drawing his needle from
its sheath, gave her a severe puncture in the arm. The pain of this
made her again, with a shriek, start up wildly from her sitting
posture; and, uncovering her snow-white arm to the elbow, she found
that blood was flowing from the deep incision.
With her imploring eyes full of horror, she turned towards Birrel and
endeavoured to speak, but her tongue, which clove to the roof of her
mouth, failed, at first, to articulate a syllable; and her lips were
hard and dry.
"Did I not tell ye quhat ye micht expect gif ye dared to sleep," said
Birrel, savagely.
She made a gasping effort to speak.
"Water!" she said, in a husky whisper, "water!--a single drop, for
the love of God!"
"Oho!" grinned Screw, "the saut bannocks are now telling tales!"
He held the Flemish jar of polished pewter before her eyes and shook
the limpid water till it sparkled in the light.
"The haill o' this is for you, dame Seton," said Birrel, "but there
is a sma' bit ceremony to be gone through first."
"Water! water!" moaned Jane, in a whispering voice, feeling as if her
throat was scorched, and her dry, parched tongue was swollen to twice
its usual size. "Oh, man, man!" she added, clasping her hands, "I
will pray for you--I will bless you in my last hour, with my whole
heart, and with my whole soul, for one drop, a single drop of water!"
There never was a villain so bad as to be without one redeeming
trait; thus, even Dobbie the doomster had his; and now the piteous
tone of Jane's husky voice, her pallid face, her entreating and
bloodshot eyes, had stirred some secret chord of human sympathy in
the recesses of his usually iron heart. He poured a little water
into a cup, and approached her. Jane's eyes flashed with
thankfulness and joy; but Birrel dashed away the cup with one hand,
and laid the other on his poniard.
Jane uttered a tremulous cry of despair.
"Then false coof and half-witted staumrel!" exclaimed the
witchfinder; "is it thus ye obey the orders of Redhall, who is our
master? Look ye, good mistress, subscribe this paper and we leave
you wi' the water-stoup, to drink and to sleep till your heart is
contented. But refuse, and woe be unto ye! For here sit we doon to
watch by turns, to keep ye, waking and sleepless, with thirst
unslackened, till _the hour of doom_, and so, my Lady Seton, ye have
the option; sign and drink, or refuse and suffer."
With one hand he held before her the large and brimming jar; with the
other he displayed a paper whereon something was written.
Within the deep jar the water seemed cold and pure, limpid and
refreshing; while her thirst was agonizing, and her whole frame felt
as if scorched by an internal fire. Her brain was whirling, a
sickness was coming over her, and human endurance could withstand the
temptation no longer.
For a moment she reflected that it was impossible for any avowal,
verbal or written, to make her more utterly miserable or degraded
than her sentence had already made her, and aware that nothing now
could change the current of her fate save the royal pardon, of which
she had not the shadow of a hope, she could only articulate--
"A pen, a pen!--the water!--the water! I am dying--dying of thirst!"
Promptly Birrel produced a pen, which he dipped in a portable
inkstand.
She took it with a trembling hand and paused.
He temptingly poured some of the sparkling water on the floor. A
gleam passed over her eyes, and in a moment she placed her name,
_Jane Seton_, to the paper, vainly endeavouring, as she did so, to
see what the lines written above her signature contained; but there
was a mist before her eyes, and now they failed her. She threw away
the pen with a shriek, and stretched out her hands towards the vessel
of water.
"What would ye think, now, if I spilled it all on the flagstones?"
said Birrel, with a grin, as he withheld the jar.
At this cruel threat she could only clasp her hands, and gaze at him
in silence.
After enjoying her agony for a few moments, he handed her the jar,
from which she drank greedily and thirstily.
"Hechhow!" said Birrel, with a triumphant growl, "now ye drink,
cummer, as I drank of the Douglasburn, at the foot of the
Cairntable," and, extinguishing their lamp, the three wretches
retired, and she was left to her own terrible thoughts.
Again and again she drank of the water, but the thrill of delight its
coolness and freshness afforded her soon passed away; and setting
down the vessel carefully, she gazed at it, and then burst into a
passion of tears.
The paper she had signed, what could it mean?
At that moment the clock of St. Cuthbert's church, which stood in the
hollow far down below the Castle, on the west, struck slowly and
solemnly the hour of four, and this sound, as it ascended to her ear,
recalled her to other thoughts.
The morning was shining through the rusty grating of her window--the
morning of another day. She thought bitterly of the paper she had
signed; and deploring her lack of strength and resolution, buried her
lace in her pillow, and gave way at last to a wild paroxysm of
despair.