CHAPTER LIX.

THE PLACE OF DOOM.

"But when the appointed day was come, No help appeared nye; Then woeful, woeful was her heart, And tears stood in her eye. And now a fyer was built of wood, And a stake was made of tree; And now Queen Elinor forth was led, A sorrowful sight to see." _Sir Aldrinyar, an old Ballad._

On this night a strange sound floated upward to the Castle of Edinburgh from the city below; it was like the murmur of distant waves, or of the rising wind shaking the branches of a forest. This was occasioned by the crowding of the people towards the _Place of Doom_, as it was graphically named.

It was a dark midnight, moonless and starless; the eyes of thousands were raised inquisitively to the black, opaque mass of the castle rock and the zone of lofty towers which then engirdled its summit, with their embrasured battlements and frowning cannon.

Culprits usually suffered at a place on the south side of the Castle-hill, where a green bank of several hundred yards sloped steeply downward from the ramparts of the Spur, to the north ends of the closes in the Grass-market, a broad arena which, from its fantastic architecture, has been said closely to resemble the Plaza of a Spanish or Italian town, and which lies in a valley to the south of the castle.

The wall of the city, which descended at an angle of nearly fifty degrees from the rock on which the fortress is built until it intersected the streets beneath at the King's Meuse, closed this sloping bank on the west. The back of a narrow close, which was demolished in the civil war of 1743, enclosed it on the east, and the Spur, with its strong rampart and twenty pieces of brass cannon, overlooked it on the north. There were then no Castle-terrace or Western Approach to disfigure the city on the south, and this green and verdant bank descended smoothly and gradually downwards to the great market-place.

The stake was placed on a small natural platform a few yards square, the same place where Thomas Forrest, vicar of Dollar, John Keillior, and John Beverage, two Dominican priests, Duncan Simpson, and Sir Robert Forrest, a gentleman of Stirlingshire, were burned for heresy in presence of the regal court, on the night of the 2nd of March, two years after the events we are about to relate. This was the place of death until the year 1681, when the Scottish government deprived the city of it for military purposes.

The stake was a strong column of oak, roughly dressed by a hatchet, and had rivetted upon it the _branks_, or witch's bridle, which hung at the end of a short chain. This instrument, which was considered so necessary in punishments by fire, and which was soon to become so famous in Scotland, that every burgh required one, was a circle of iron, formed of four parts, connected by steel hinges, and adapted to encircle the neck, like the modern _jougs_, which may sometimes be seen at kirk-doors. The chain was behind; in front was the broad gag which entered the mouth, and pressed down the tongue to prevent the unhappy wretch, whose head was locked within it, crying aloud; and after the execution, this diabolical invention, which was usually found among the ashes of the fire and of the skeleton, with fragments of bones and teeth adhering to it, was carefully preserved by the thrifty baillies in the council-chamber until the next "worrying," as it was termed.

Several horseloads of faggots, nicely split, and tied up in bundles, were piled three feet deep around the stake by the concurrents, or assistants of Sanders Screw, in absence of Dobbie, whom a blow from Leslie's sword had left half dead at a cottage near Inverteil; and on these bundles they poured several buckets of tar and oil, thereafter sprinkling the whole with gunpowder and sulphur. These operations soothed the excitement and impatience of the expectant thousands, who long before the fatal hour had taken possession of the whole ground about the stake, a circle round which was kept open by the halberds of the provost, while beyond there were a party of fifty mounted spearmen under his kinsman, Sir Andrew Preston of Grourtoun, who was sheathed in complete armour. Every second trooper bore a lighted torch; thus the mob could see with ease, and be seen.

In addition to the inhabitants of the city, nearly all those of the four municipalities, or burghs of regality, which lay without the barriers--viz., the Portsburgh, lying before the West-port; the Canongate, without the Netherbow-port; the Potter-row, which lay before the Kirk-of-field-port; and the Calton, lying without St. Andrew's port, or the Craig-end-gate, were collected in the spacious area of the Grass-market, and on the steep face of the castle bank. The walls of the ravelin which crowned it on the north; the bartizans, roofs, windows, even the chimney-heads and pediments, every ledge and part of the houses on the west; and the ends of those which closed the ground below, were crowded with spectators. The market-place was like a sea of upturned faces, all visible in the torchlight, though far down below; and the hum of their myriad voices, mingled with many a shrill cry or threat, the clink of steel or clatter of iron hoofs, as the armed horsemen rode to and fro keeping order among them, ascended the side of the hill, and echoed among the rocks and towers of the fortress, where the poor victim for whom they waited was kneeling at her prayers.

So great was the crowd in the market, that even the bartizans of the Greyfriars' monastery, a large building which formed part of the street, and had been built by James I. about a hundred years before, for Cornelius of Zurich and certain canons of Cologne, together with the loftier houses of the Knights of Torphichen, in the Bow, though still more distant, were covered with spectators.

Clad in thin grey cassocks girt with knotted cords, the Greyfriars ran about among the people, barefooted, and carrying little wooden boxes to receive money from the charitable and religious to pay for "masses and prayers for the soul of the poor lost heretic and sorceress,"--prayers and masses for the poor girl who was yet living. Solemn mass, as for the dead, was to have been said in the chapel of St. Margaret, the queen of Scotland, by Father St. Bernard, and the chaplain of the fortress; but the baillies, the portly deacons of the crafts and consequential councillors of the gude town, were impatient for the _deid chack_, and had ordered that, as the friars had lingered too long with Jane in her cell, and as the hour of twelve approached, and the people were impatient, they should do their office at the stake--an edict of selfishness and cruelty.

This _deid chack_ was a dinner or supper (according to the hour) of which the magistrates always partook after an execution; and it was generally served up with great civic state, in a chamber which adjoined the church of St. Giles, and which in later days was the vestry of the Tolbooth kirk.

Twelve rang from the great tower of that venerable fane; and to the ears of all it seemed to do so more slowly and solemnly than usual, for such is the force of imagination. At the same moment the lurid flash of a culverin broke redly from the battlements of the Constable's Tower, and its hoarse boom pealed away over the heads of the people.

Every heart leaped, every ear tingled, every eye dilated. A rapid murmur pervaded the vast multitude, and then died away, leaving them all attention--all ear and eye; they seemed to have but one pulse, one heart, and their expectations were excited to the utmost degree when the strong iron portal of the Spur unclosed, and the procession of death appeared slowly descending the steep bank towards the stake.

First came six arquebusiers in steel caps and crimson doublets, marching in double file, with their matches smoking.

Then came Sanders Screw, dressed in flaming scarlet, with a leather apron, and his arms bared to the elbow. He bore a lighted torch, which flared luridly on his withered visage and decrepit figure. He looked like an antiquated fiend.

Then came the governor of the fortress, Sir James Riddel, walking on foot, but in half armour, attended by an esquire and two pages, one bearing his sword, the other his helmet. With him were the magistrates in their scarlet gowns, wearing their chains of gold, with their sword-bearer, macer, and halberdiers, clad in blue doublets, laced, and slashed with yellow.

Then appeared Father St. Bernard, with the Dominican who acted as the governor's chaplain. Both were walking bareheaded and in full canonicals, with their eyes fixed upon their books. St. Bernard was praying, the Dominican made the responses in a loud and audible voice. All the people immediately uncovered their heads, and the horsemen of Gourtoun lowered the points of their lances.

When Lady Jane appeared, another low murmur pervaded the people, mingled with exclamations of--

"Alake! alake! oh, waly! waly! Eh, sirs, and gude preserve us! waly! waly!" for the latter is an old Scottish exclamation expressive of the utmost commiseration.

It rose almost to a shout, then it died away, and silence sealed the lips of nearly ten thousand persons; they seemed for a time to be frozen with pity, horror, and expectation of the dire catastrophe; and so they remained with their countless eyes fixed upon her, their mouths open, their voices hushed, their breathing suspended.

Poor Jane! Amid all that living sea, around, above, and below her, she saw not the face of a friend, and yet the heads were rising and falling like the billows of a heaving ocean, as the hushed people, animated by morbid curiosity, struggled in silence to obtain a full view of her.

The lines of Nicholas Howe are strikingly descriptive of her aspect; for as she descended to the pile--

"Submissive, sad, and lowly was her look; A burning taper in her hand she bore, And on her shoulders carelessly confused With loose neglect her lovely tresses hung; Upon her cheek a faintish flush was spread; Feeble she seemed, ami sorely smit with pain. Her streaming eye bent ever on the earth, Except when in some bitter pang of sorrow, To heaven she seemed in fervent zeal to raise, _And begged that mercy man denied her here_."

Instead of being dressed in a penitent's frock of tarred canvas, painted with flames pointing downwards, like those of the "heretics" whom the same spectators had seen burned at the Rood of Greenside, before the gate of the Carmelites, a short time before, Jane wore an ordinary tunic of blue silk, and her little velvet cap, with its triangular front, from the top of which a pendant bob-jewel sparkled on her brow,--for she had resolved to die bravely. Her rosary, formed of silver and coral beads, hung at her wrist; her missal was in one hand, a taper in the other. Her luxuriant brown hair hung over her shoulders, in sign of sorrow and repentance; she was sorely changed, and worn almost to a skeleton, but there was something almost holy in the solemn and resigned expression of her beautiful face. It was the pallor of long mental suffering, mingled with a sublime resignation to the will of God and the hard fate He designed for her at the hands of His creatures, who seemed to her so merciless.

Now, hovering between time and eternity, she seemed as one beyond the pale of life.

The fear and hatred which her name, as a rumoured sorceress, had excited in the minds of the people, died away when they beheld her. Sorrow and compassion swelled in every heart, and each man whispered to his neighbour of her youth and beauty, and the memory of that good and valiant earl her father, "who fought so well for Scotland, God rest him!"

Many wrung their hands, many wept, and more prayed for her; for if they were blunt and fiery, our Scottish sires of the olden time, and somewhat too ready with the use of their swords and dirks, they were warm-hearted and kind, as they were honest and true.

Her dignity and courage deserved their praise, for on beholding those assembled thousands, the glittering pikes of the mailed horsemen, the halberds and arquebuses, the stake with its chain, and the oiled faggots which formed that appalling pile, Jane gathered courage from her pride of birth and name, and resolved that history should never have it to record that a daughter of the house of Ashkirk blanched in the face of death--that grim foe whom its sons had so often confronted on the fields of France and England. As these thoughts fired her heart, her cheek flushed, her dark eye lighted up, she became in a moment sublime; and as the bright torches glared on her wasted and ghastly beauty, the people saw in her no longer the regicide and the sorceress, but a heroine, a martyr!

Now she knelt down by the pile, for Father St. Bernard, in a low voice, almost inaudibly tremulous, began to repeat the prayers contained in the mass usually performed for the dead on the day of decease or burial; for, as an "obdurate heretic and sorceress," Jane was not permitted to receive the last sacraments of her church in public, but the good old prebendary had bestowed them in secret.

Then, as this solemn service commenced, the entire assembled thousands sank upon their knees and bowed down their heads. Even the Reformers who were in the crowd (and there were many) could not refuse to kneel and pray at a crisis so sad and terrible, when a poor human soul was, as they thought, hovering on the brink of hell.

The horsemen of Gourtoun remained upright in their saddles, with their armour gleaming in the torchlight, which shed its uncertain glare upon the crowded bank, and on the giant fortress that towered into the clouds above it, upon the bastions and cannon of the Spur, upon the crowded windows and fantastic architecture of the closes, and the sea of heads that were bowed in the market-place, far down below, upon the kneeling sufferer, the silver hair, bald heads, and shining vestments of the priests beside her; while, like the murmur of a gentle wind as it passes over a full-eared corn-field, the voices of the people rose when they joined in the beautiful hymn prescribed by what was then their church,--

"The day of wrath! that dreadful day! Shall the whole world in ashes lay, As David and the sybils say. What horror shall invade the mind, When the strict Judge, who would be kind, Shall have few venial faults to find!"

and so on to the close of the solemn chaunt,--

"Prostrate, my contrite heart I rend,-- My God, my Father, and my Friend, Do not forsake me in mine end! Well may they curse their second birth, Who rise to everlasting death. Thou great Creator of mankind, Oh, let _this soul_ compassion find!"

Amid all that vast assemblage, there was one person who did not seem to join in this hymn. He had lost his bonnet; his head was bare, and his hair, wild, matted, and disordered, waved around his head, and mingled with a beard that seemed to have been untrimmed for a fortnight. He was armed with a long sword, and rode a powerful horse, the blood of which was dripping from a pair of sharp spurs, which appeared to be hurriedly buckled on. The whole multitude were intently regarding the poor being who was about to suffer, otherwise the pale visage, fierce eyes, and wild aspect of this strange horseman must have attracted, in a marked manner, the attention of all who chanced to observe him.

He was Roland Vipont, who, with a heart full of fury, and a head full of desperate thoughts, had posted himself as near the pile as the spearmen of Sir Andrew Preston would permit.

Love and wrath, together with wounded pride, had excited his great inborn courage to a point of rashness and bravery that made him feel strong as a Hercules, bold as a lion, and fitted to encounter, without a shadow of fear or qualm of doubt, Sir Andrew of Gourtoun's fifty lances in a general mêlée.

Slowly and impressively the chapel bells of the Greyfriars, and of St. Mary in the Portsburgh, began to toll a knell for the passing soul, and the heads of the people bent lower.

"Blessed Lord," Roland heard the voice of the prebend praying; "oh, King of Glory, deliver the souls of all the faithful departed from the flames of hell, and from the deep pit."

Jane's pale lips seemed to move as she made a response.

"Deliver them from the lion's mouth, lest hell swallow them, and lest they fall into darkness.

"Let the standard-bearer, Saint Michael, bring them unto the holy light which of old thou didst promise to Abraham and to his posterity."

"Amen!" responded the calm voice of the old Dominican.

St. Bernard shut his missal, and covered his face with the sleeve of his vestment.

As one man, the silent thousands raised their heads, and Sanders Screw shook the flame of his torch, to light it fully.

Jane arose, and gazed placidly around her.

_The time had come!_

Then, if it could be possible, the heart of Roland Vipont beat quicker, and he unsheathed his sword.

"Aid me, thou blessed Power, whom all these hearts have invoked! aid me for her sake! But, aid or no aid, if I am forsaken, 'tis but the soldier's death! Vipont! Vipont!" he exclaimed, and suddenly urging his horse towards the stake, he threw his left arm around Jane, and drew her across his saddle before any one had the least idea of what he meant to do; and brandishing his sword around his head, dashed the gory spurs again into the torn flanks of his horse.

Appalled by the rapidity of the action, the vast assemblage stood immovable.

Down the frightful steep towards the King's Meuse he rode with the speed of an arrow; and, as the clouds part before a thunderbolt, the horsemen gave way, and the people parted before him.

"Shut the gates of the town!" cried Sir Andrew Preston; but a roar of voices burst from the multitude, and amid that roar his voice was confounded and lost.

Fortunately the gates were open, and deserted by their warders; and thus, before the people had recovered from their astonishment, and before the troopers of Gourtoun were ordered to pursue, Roland Vipont, with his rescued prize, had cleared the Castle Wynd, the crowded market-place, and left the city's western barrier far behind him, as he spurred, like a whirlwind, towards the wood and marshes of Corstorphine, where, almost girded by a lake, and surrounded by a deep moat, the strong and stately fortress of the Forresters awaited him with open gates.