The Fair Maid of Perth; Or, St. Valentine's Day by Walter Scott (popular romance novels txt) 📗

texture, the coal black bristles of Bonthron. Thus, though famine had begun the work, it would seem that Rothsay’s death had been finally accomplished by violence. The private stair to the dungeon, the keys of which were found at the subaltern assassin’s belt, the situation of the vault, its communication with the external air by the fissure in the walls, and the wretched lair of straw, with the fetters which remained there, fully confirmed the story of Catharine and of the glee woman.

“We will not hesitate an instant,” said the Douglas to his near kinsman, the Lord Balveny, as soon as they returned from the dungeon. “Away with the murderers! hang them over the battlements.”

“But, my lord, some trial may be fitting,” answered Balveny.

“To what purpose?” answered, Douglas. “I have taken them red hand; my authority will stretch to instant execution. Yet stay—have we not some Jedwood men in our troop?”

“Plenty of Turnbulls, Rutherfords, Ainslies, and so forth,” said Balveny.

“Call me an inquest of these together; they are all good men and true, saving a little shifting for their living. Do you see to the execution of these felons, while I hold a court in the great hall, and we’ll try whether the jury or the provost marshal do their work first; we will have Jedwood justice—hang in haste and try at leisure.”

“Yet stay, my lord,” said Ramorny, “you may rue your haste—will you grant me a word out of earshot?”

“Not for worlds!” said Douglas; “speak out what thou hast to say before all that are here present.”

“Know all; then,” said Ramorny, aloud, “that this noble Earl had letters from the Duke of Albany and myself, sent him by the hand of yon cowardly deserter, Buncle—let him deny it if he dare—counselling the removal of the Duke for a space from court, and his seclusion in this Castle of Falkland.”

“But not a word,” replied Douglas, sternly smiling, “of his being flung into a dungeon—famished—strangled. Away with the wretches, Balveny, they pollute God’s air too long!”

The prisoners were dragged off to the battlements. But while the means of execution were in the act of being prepared, the apothecary expressed so ardent a desire to see Catharine once more, and, as he said, for the good of his soul, that the maiden, in hopes his obduracy might have undergone some change even at the last hour, consented again to go to the battlements, and face a scene which her heart recoiled from. A single glance showed her Bonthron, sunk in total and drunken insensibility; Ramorny, stripped of his armour, endeavouring in vain to conceal fear, while he spoke with a priest, whose good offices he had solicited; and Dwining, the same humble, obsequious looking, crouching individual she had always known him. He held in his hand a little silver pen, with which he had been writing on a scrap of parchment.

“Catharine,” he said—“he, he, he!—I wish to speak to thee on the nature of my religious faith.”

“If such be thy intention, why lose time with me? Speak with this good father.”

“The good father,” said Dwining, “is—he, he!—already a worshipper of the deity whom I have served. I therefore prefer to give the altar of mine idol a new worshipper in thee, Catharine. This scrap of parchment will tell thee how to make your way into my chapel, where I have worshipped so often in safety. I leave the images which it contains to thee as a legacy, simply because I hate and contemn thee something less than any of the absurd wretches whom I have hitherto been obliged to call fellow creatures. And now away—or remain and see if the end of the quacksalver belies his life.”

“Our Lady forbid!” said Catharine.

“Nay,” said the mediciner, “I have but a single word to say, and yonder nobleman’s valiancie may hear it if he will.”

Lord Balveny approached, with some curiosity; for the undaunted resolution of a man who never wielded sword or bore armour and was in person a poor dwindled dwarf, had to him an air of something resembling sorcery.”

“You see this trifling implement,” said the criminal, showing the silver pen. “By means of this I can escape the power even of the Black Douglas.”

“Give him no ink nor paper,” said Balveny, hastily, “he will draw a spell.”

“Not so, please your wisdom and valiancie—he, he, he!” said Dwining with his usual chuckle, as he unscrewed the top of the pen, within which was a piece of sponge or some such substance, no bigger than a pea.

“Now, mark this—” said the prisoner, and drew it between his lips. The effect was instantaneous. He lay a dead corpse before them, the contemptuous sneer still on his countenance.

Catharine shrieked and fled, seeking, by a hasty descent, an escape from a sight so appalling. Lord Balveny was for a moment stupified, and then exclaimed, “This may be glamour! hang him over the battlements, quick or dead. If his foul spirit hath only withdrawn for a space, it shall return to a body with a dislocated neck.”

His commands were obeyed. Ramorny and Bonthron were then ordered for execution. The last was hanged before he seemed quite to comprehend what was designed to be done with him. Ramorny, pale as death, yet with the same spirit of pride which had occasioned his ruin, pleaded his knighthood, and demanded the privilege of dying by decapitation by the sword, and not by the noose.

“The Douglas never alters his doom,” said Balveny. “But thou shalt have all thy rights. Send the cook hither with a cleaver.”

The menial whom he called appeared at his summons.

“What shakest thou for, fellow?” said Balveny; “here, strike me this man’s gilt spurs from his heels with thy cleaver. And now, John Ramorny, thou art no longer a knight, but a knave. To the halter with him, provost marshal! hang him betwixt his companions, and higher than them if it may be.”

In a quarter of an hour afterwards, Balveny descended to tell the Douglas that the criminals were executed.

“Then there is no further use in the trial,” said the Earl. “How say you, good men of inquest, were these men guilty of high treason—ay or no?”

“Guilty,” exclaimed the obsequious inquest, with edifying unanimity, “we need no farther evidence.”

“Sound trumpets, and to horse then, with our own train only; and let each man keep silence on what has chanced here, until the proceedings shall be laid before the King, which cannot conveniently be till the battle of Palm Sunday shall be fought and ended. Select our attendants, and tell each man who either goes with us or remains behind that he who prates dies.”

In a few minutes the Douglas was on horseback, with the followers selected to attend his person. Expresses were sent to his daughter, the widowed Duchess of Rothsay, directing her to take her course to Perth, by the shores of Lochleven, without approaching Falkland, and committing to her charge Catharine Glover and the glee woman, as persons whose safety he