CHAPTER XLVII.

WHAT THE PAPER CONTAINED.

"Oh, misery! While I was dragged by an insidious band Of pyrates--savage bloodhounds--into bondage. But, witness, heaven! witness, ye midnight hours, That heard my ceaseless groans, how her dear image Grew to my very heart!"--_The Desart Island_, 1760.

Sleepless, and with the horrible conversation of Birrel and Dobbie still tingling in his ears, Roland passed the night in that frame of mind we have endeavoured to describe, though it can be better conceived.

The morning dawned, and the thick gratings of the windows appeared in strong relief against the saffron sky, and sounds of life arose from the waking city below. The bright sun was gilding the vane of St. Giles, the spire of the Dominicans, the square tower of St. Mary-in-the-Fields, and the lofty summits of the town, while, like a golden snake, the Forth was seen winding afar between the wooded mountains of the west.

With arms folded, his head sunk upon his breast, and his hollow eyes fixed dreamily on the floor, Roland was immersed in a chaos of gloomy thoughts, when a noise occasioned by a hand raising a window opposite startled him. He looked up, and a letter fell at his feet.

He clutched and tore it open.

"Jane! from Jane--from my dear Jane?" he exclaimed, huskily, and pressed her signature to his lips. "It is signed by herself (how well I know that dear signature!) but another has written it--St. Bernard, perhaps. Ah, my God! she is too ill to write, and they separate me from her. Jane--Jane!"

Now Sir Roland Vipont, though a poor gentleman and soldier of fortune of the sixteenth century, knew enough of scholarcraft (which, like every other craft, was not held then in much repute) to enable him to decipher the letter of Jane Seton, or rather that letter which, by the order of Redhall, Birrel had compelled her to sign by the bribe alternately offered and withheld--a draught of cold water.

For a time there was an envious mist before the hot dry eyes of Roland Vipont; and thrice he had to pause before he so far recovered his energies as to be able to read this epistle, which had been thus delivered to him by the hand of a friend, as he did not doubt. Literally, it ran as follows:

"MINE OWN SWEET HEART, SIR ROLAND,

"Abandoned now by my evil Mentor, and inspired by the blessed saints, who know all things, uninfluenced by any man, and of mine own free will, I hereby confess, certify, and make known unto you, that I have indeed been guilty of the sorcery and witchcraft of which I am accused; and that queen Magdalene died by the same magic and power of enchantment which forced thee to love me. Thus, the strong regard thou bearest me is in no way attributable to any beauty, manner, or apparent goodness, with which nature hath gifted me; but solely to my diabolical arts and sorceries. At this thou wilt be sorely grieved, but cannot be surprised, mine own sweet heart, when thou thinkest of the myriad infernal deeds that are permitted by Heaven and brought about by the instigation of Satan, to whom I have borne more than one brood of imps. I saw that thou wert simple, guileless, good, and brave; and thus were fitted to fall easily into my snares, where many have fallen before thee; but Heaven, by revealing my sins, hath saved thee in time. And I do further confess that I am a false traitor, a dyvour heretic and renouncer of my baptism. Written for me, by a learned clerk, at the Castle of Edinburgh, the 17th day of July, in the year of God I^m V^c xxxvii.

"JANE SETON."

"My Jane! my Jane! oh, this is hell's own work!" exclaimed the unhappy young man; who became stricken with terror at avowals which were so startling and so well calculated to make a deep impression on any man, and on any mind of his time, when a belief in the power of the devil was so strong. "This agony, and not the love I bear thee, is the work of sorcery. It is a forgery--I will never believe it; and yet her signature is there! and after trial, when torture, shame, and agony were past, what could bring forth an avowal such as this? Oh, what but remorse for deceiving one who had loved thee so well! The mother of fiends! she so good, so charitable, so religious, who never missed a mass or festival. I shudder and laugh at the same moment! A sorceress--Jane .... where is the Jane I loved--the good and gentle? She confront the terrors of hell--the touch of Satan?--impossible--frenzy and folly; and yet, and yet, and yet my brain is turned, and I feel as if a serpent had thrust its head into my heart."

Thus thought Roland, incoherently.

All the implicit trust of a lover, and the blind chivalric devotion of a true gentleman of the year 1537, failed to bear up Vipont against the chilling superstition which then overshadowed every mind and everything, and which tinges the writings of the most subtle casuists and philosophers of those days; and assuredly one could not expect much deep casuistry or philosophy either to be exhibited by Roland, whose school had been the camp, and whose playground in boyhood had been the corpse-strewn battle-fields of France and Italy. It was an age of fairy spells and magic charms, mysterious omens, and gliding spectres--of ten thousand deadly and now forgotten terrors; and we must enter fully into the feelings of the age to appreciate or conceive the frightful effect this unsought for and unexpected avowal of supernatural crime produced upon the mind of Roland Vipont.

His first impulse was to stigmatize the letter as the most deliberate of forgeries, to rend it into a hundred fragments, and to scatter them from the window on the waters of the loch below; but the memory of the words those fragments contained, and their terrible import, remained as if written with fire upon his soul, and wherever he turned he saw them palpably before him; thus, at times, the most cruel doubts were added to his former despair.

He felt that his mental agony was rapidly becoming too great for endurance; and he shrunk, as it were, back within himself with terror at the idea that he might become insane.

The pride of his strong and gallant heart--a heart that had never quailed amid the boom of cannon and the shock of spears, the rush of charging squadrons and the clang of descending swords--was now bowed down; and covering his face with his hand, he wept like a child, and with that deep and deathlike agony that can only be known by the strong man when forced to find a refuge and relief in tears.

Redhall, that tiger-heart, had calculated well and deeply. The sight of those tears, produced by the letter he had so cruelly and so subtly contrived, would have been as balm to his heart, and as "marrow to his bones;" for he laughed aloud when Nichol Birrel, by dawn of day, related, in exaggerated terms, the agony of Vipont, which he had neither the means of observing or ascertaining; for he had simply, by the assistance of a ladder, dropped the letter into his apartment, and hurried away.

"The measure of my vengeance against this man is now almost full!" said he; "woe be to him who would lessen it! To have destroyed her while this Vipont believed in her innocence would have left that vengeance but half sated. Now have I fairly robbed her of her honour and her very soul--at least, in the eyes of this gilded moth, who loves her, as I know, even to adoration; but not more than I do--oh, no!--not more than I, who am her destroyer, and on whose hands her blood will lie. Oh, Jane!...."

His head fell forward on his breast.

"But harkye, Birrel," said he, suddenly recovering; "to-day the cardinal goes to Falkland, to seek her pardon from the king; and this pardon (if granted) young Leslie of Balquhan is to convey straight to Sir James Riddel, at our castle here. Now mark me, Nichol Birrel, and mark me well, this pardon must be brought to me, and to me alone. 'Tis an insult of this meddling cardinal to send it to Cranstoun-Riddel, the castellan, while I am lord advocate. This very day, after morning mass, his eminence and this holiday lieutenant of the guards, set out for Falkland. Do thou, with Trotter and fifteen, or as many good horsemen as you can muster, follow, and watch well for Leslie's return. Be more wary than you were in Douglasdale, or what avail your promises of service? Between this and Falkland there is many a mile of lonely muirland, where blows may be struck, or bones broken, and where a slain man may sleep undiscovered till the judgment-day--see to it! This Leslie is in your hands, as Vipont was before. A hundred French crowns if thou bringest me the pardon. Stay!--there is the Laird of Chitto, who hath a plea before the lords; tell him, that if he wishes well to his ease, a _certain horseman_ must not pass the Lomond-hill; there are the Lindesays of Kirkforthar and Bandon, who are the sworn foemen of the House of Balquhan. I know thy skill and cunning--ride and rouse them! Ride and raise all the Howe of Fife on the king's messenger; and here is my thumb on't, Nichol Birrel, my three best crofts at Redhall shall be thine of a free gift, heritably and irredeemably, to thee and thine heirs for ever."

In one hour from that time this indefatigable ruffian had Tam Trotter and fifteen other horsemen completely armed, with helmets and cuirasses, gorgets, and gloves of steel, swords, lances, and petronels, awaiting his orders (and the cardinal's departure) in the stable yard of Redhall's lodging in the Canongate.