CHAPTER XIV.

THE CHANCELLOR OF SCOTLAND.

"I made such service to our Sovereign King, He did promote me still to high estate; A prince above all priestis for to reign, Archbishop of St. Andrew's consecrate. To that honour when I was elevate, My prideful heart was not content withal, Till that I was created cardinal." Sir D. LINDESAY'S _Tragedie of the Cardinal_.

With his long rapier under his arm, and his bonnet drawn well over his face, the lord advocate, with all the air of a man who has found a clue to something, or is mentally pursuing a distant object, hurried, as we have said, from the church, and threaded his way between the fleshers' stalls, which encumbered both sides of the street about the Nether-bow and arch of the Blackfriars Wynd.

Descending the latter, he reached the residence of Cardinal Beaton, where, through the medium of several pages, esquires, and pikemen, he sent up his name, requesting an audience, and was immediately admitted.

David Beaton was then in the prime of life; his stature was commanding, his air was dignified, his bearing noble. As we may see by the portraits of him, still preserved at Edinburgh, his face was grave, dark, and eminently handsome; his eyes were bright and piercing, and he wore his beard and moustaches pointed _à la cavalier_, rather than shaven off like a priest. He was seated in an easy-chair, and wore his red baretta, black cassock, and gold cross. His large scarlet hat lay upon a side table, near the two-handed sword of his grandfather, old Sir David of Pitmilly.

Our Scottish Wolsey was seated near a table covered with books and papers; there were several portfolios marked with the fleur-de-lys, the rose, the eagle, &c., containing the memorandums of correspondence with France, England, the Empire, and so forth. The apartment, which was little and elegant, was hung with green damask flowered with leaves of red and gold; his patrimonial arms, the blazon of "Bethune's line of Picardie," appeared above the mantelpiece. There was no fire, for the season was summer, and the andirons were burnished bright as silver. A book was half open in his hand, but his eyes were thoughtfully fixed on a window, through which he saw the antique buildings of the opposite street, a steep wynd, that led towards the Dominican monastery, the square tower and slated spire of which shone in the light of the western sun, and terminated the view. His daughter, the Lady Margaret Beaton, a charming young girl with blue eyes and dark brown hair--the same who, five years after, became the bride of the young Lord Lindesay--was sitting on a little tabourette by his side, decorating a little kitten with ribbons.

As she had been born prior to his taking vows of celibacy, the cardinal had no reason to conceal her; but as soon as Sir Adam Otterburn entered, at a sign from her father, she kissed his hand, snatched the kitten, which she considered her peculiar property, placed a chair for the visitor, and withdrew.

"God be with your eminence!" said Redhall, half kneeling, as he saluted the cardinal.

"And peace with you," replied Beaton, with a gracious wave of the hand, which, while it pointed to a seat, passed also for a priestly benediction. He closed his book "La Legende de Monseigneur Saint Dominique," &c., an old black-letter quarto, "_Imprimé à Paris_, 1495," and continued--"Have I the pleasure of seeing Sir Adam as a friend, or in his official capacity?"

"I trust your eminence will never consider my visits the less friendly because I come so frequently on the service of the state; but now mine errand closely concerns the latter."

"I think that thou, as lord advocate, and I, as lord chancellor, ought to be collared together, like a couple of questing dogs. Well, what in God's name is astir now?"

"Treason!"

"That is nothing new."

"Trafficking with the English--and it may be sorcery!"

"My God! dost thou say so? Those accursed Douglases, I warrant me?"

Redhall gave an emphatic nod, and put one leg over the other. The cardinal let fall his book, grasped the knobs of his chair, and reclined his head back as if he expected to hear something momentous. "Well, my lord, and what now of this turbulent tribe?"

"I seek a _carte blanche_ warrant of arrest and committal to ward--or rather, concurrence with it--does your eminence understand?"

"Agnus Dei!" said the cardinal, crossing, and speaking with great bitterness and energy; "how sad it is that, from being the bulwark and buckler of Scotland, the house of Angus and its allies have become her sworn foes! Too blindly the enemies of Arran, they never rest while a Hamilton lives, and are too much in Henry's interest ever again to be true to Scotland. How was it when James assumed the government, and, by the intercession of Wolsey and myself, so unwisely permitted the ambitious Earls of Ashkirk and of Angus to return home? No sooner were their feet on Scottish ground, than, ever restless, they raised a faction to expel the queen-mother and the minister Arran, and came at once to blows about where the Parliament should meet. 'I will hold it here,' said the determined Arran. 'Thou shalt hold it _there_,' said the imperious Angus. Then were banners displayed and lances lifted; and Angus and Ashkirk feared not to bend their cannon against the royal castle of Edinburgh, where the young king, the queen-mother, and their prime minister were residing. Then came trooping and hosting, and castles were stormed, and garrisoned, and stormed again; towns were burned and tenants plundered. The high-sheriff of Ayr slew the Earl of Cassilis; the islesmen of Orkney expelled and slew the Lord Caithness; the knight of Tulliallan slew the Abbot of Culrosse; and some ruffian of hell murdered my steadfast friend and true, Sir Thomas Maclellan of Bombie, at the door of St. Giles. (Redhall felt himself grow pale.) The Douglases pillaged the castle of St. Andrews and the abbey of Dunfermline; they fought the battles of Melrose and Linlithgow, where the good Earl of Lennox was so cruelly run through the body after he had surrendered. The whole country seemed to be hastening to destruction, for the swords of the Douglases bore all before them, and every post, place, and perquisite under the crown, every royal castle and office of state, was held by a Douglas. The royal guards were all Douglases; and the young king was their prisoner, while his people were reduced to slavery. Well! I then thought the time had come to bestir me," continued the cardinal, with a smile of satisfaction. "I did so; and the king escaped from the tower of Falkland. He summoned the nobles in arms at Stirling; the wheel of fate revolved again, and, deprived of place and power, the Douglases were proscribed, forfeited, and driven into England--England, whose kings have ever rejoiced in fanning the flame of Scottish civil war--the policy of hell, which none have adopted more than the present atrocious tyrant, their eighth Henry."

"All this I know well," said Redhall, endeavouring to repress his impatience at this retrospective reverie.

"There, fostered by this heretic prince, they have become the enemies of their fatherland, the believers of a false doctrine, the rebels of their king and the accursed of their God. None has done more than the Lord Ashkirk to further a marriage between King James and a daughter of the mansworn Tudor; but happily, I have ever been victorious; for the honour and policy of Scotland and France require that they must league together against the grasping ambition and centralizing greed of England. Thou knowest that I have ever been for France, and bear about as much love for England as a tiger doth to a panther. When Henry offered his daughter to James, with the office of lieutenant-general of all England and Ireland, happily, I warned him of the gilded snare, and dismissed the ambassador, Howard, with a remembrance of how England had treated the shipwrecked James I. When Godscallo came from the Emperor Charles to offer his sister Mary of Austria as a queen for Scotland, who defeated him, and turned his dangerous eloquence against himself?"

"Your eminence," said Redhall, putting the left leg over the right.

"When he offered Donna Maria of Portugal, the daughter of Eleonora of Austria," resumed Beaton, with a smile of gratified vanity, "and boasted of her beauty and the sixty battles of her victorious uncle, who waived all his sophistry by a word?"

"Your eminence of course," sighed Redhall.

"When Christian II. of Denmark offered his daughter, the Princess Dorothea, though she was already contracted to the beggarly Elector Frederick, I dismissed him, and briefly too; for my whole soul was bent on preserving the ancient league of amity, that together the banners of Scotland and France might be turned against their common enemy; and by my own energy, assisted by God and our Blessed Lady, I had the young Queen Magdalene espoused to James; and NOW let the Douglases do their worst, for, ratified before the holy altar of Notre Dame de Paris, that alliance can never be broken!"

"Death will break it," said the advocate, revengefully, for he was somewhat irritated by this long preamble. "Magdalene is dying by inches, and there are abroad such rumours of sorcery in the matter that I crave a warrant to seize----"

"Whom?" asked Beaton, with a terrible glance.

"The Countess of Ashkirk and her daughter, the Lady Jane Seton," said Redhall, with a sinking heart.

"Margaret of Ashkirk?" said the cardinal, with a look of blank astonishment, "the widow of the good Earl John? Beware thee, my lord, lest zeal outrun discretion. Her husband was a stout knight and true to Scotland."

"As I tell your eminence that his widow is an ill-woman and false! Her son, the outlawed earl, hath again re-entered Scotland by the Middle Marches."

"Thou dost not say so?"

"Sure as I live and breathe."

"On what errand?"

"Can you ask?" said Redhall, with a smile; "treason, civil war, and the destruction of the Hamiltons, no doubt. And with the knowledge that he is an outlawed traitor, the countess hath reset him."

"Natural enough, he is the poor woman's son."

"But the master of the ordnance hath likewise done so."

"Natural enough, too, for he is said to love the earl's sister."

"Your eminence is strangely cool in this matter," said Redhall, grinding his teeth; "but you know not all that common rumour sayeth."

"Ah! what the devil says it now?"

"That the young queen is dying," replied the advocate, drawing near, sinking his voice impressively, and presuming even to grasp his arm; "sorcery is at work; every man who looks upon her reads death in her face, and the hopes of Henry that James may yet marry his daughter are rising again."

"Hah!" There was a brief pause.

"And what wouldst thou have?" asked Beaton.

"Permission to seize and commit to sure ward the Countess of Ashkirk and her daughter--a measure demanded by the safety of the nation."

Beaton shook his head.

"Rumour is busy, and avers that the earl is concealed within the ports of Edinburgh," continued the wily advocate, who, for his own ends, did not choose to say _where_; "my spies inform me that he has been heard to boast of being, ere long, at Stirling bridge with an army of English borderers, for he hath made a vow to sup----"

"Where?"

"In thy tower of Creich."

The dark eyes of Beaton flashed fire; for in the tower of Creich, rumour (which in those days supplied, somewhat indifferently, however, the place of the public press) asserted that the cardinal kept quite a seraglio. It touched him in the quick.

"The earl said so--ha!" he muttered, opening his portfolio; "indeed--um--um--and where dost thou wish the countess committed to ward?"

"Your eminence's castle of St. Andrew is a sure place."

"I send none there but heretics; the tower of Inchkeith is a stronger fortlet."

"The Knight of Barncleugh is captain there--a Hamilton too."

"Very suitable," continued the cardinal, writing on a slip of paper a warrant to arrest and imprison, 'during the king's pleasure, Margaret Countess Dowager, and the Lady Jane, daughter of the umquhile John Earl of Ashkirk, together with Archibald Seton, sometyme designated of Ashkirk, but now under sentence of forfeiture.' "Send the Albany herald to the countess, and let him take some fifteen pikes of my guard; one of Sir Robert Barton's boats will convey the ladies to the Inch. Of late, James has shown over much favour to this family, whose besetting sin has been their leaguing with England; and I hope that, ere long," continued Beaton, thinking of the tower of Creich, "this troublesome young lord will pay the penalty of his insolence to me and his crimes against the state----"

"My lord the Bishop of Limoges," announced the young Lord Lindesay, the cardinal's favourite page, ushering in that reverend prelate.

"Your eminence will not omit to send the requisite troops and cannon towards Douglasdale to-morrow, for Ashkirk may be there," said the lord advocate, rising.

"Before vespers, Sir Roland Vipont shall hear from me," replied Beaton, as Redhall sank on one knee, kissed the ruby ring on his finger, and hurried away with a hasty step and a beating heart.