CHAPTER LXIX.

THE MIDNIGHT TRYST.

"And, as they say, Lamentings heard i' the air; strange scream of death; And prophesying, with accents terrible, Of dire combustion and confused events, New hatched to the woful time."--_Macbeth_.

True to his appointment, about twelve o'clock, "that hour o'nicht's black arch the keystane," on the night before the important day of the three solemnities, when the papal dispensation was to be read, an excommunication to be pronounced, and that Iron Belt, so famous in the history of James IV., to be consecrated and bestowed--Hew Borthwick, the fell spirit, the evil genius of Margaret Drummond--or rather, the vile slave and tool of villains more subtle than himself--appeared at the ancient bridge of Dunblane; the same which is mentioned in the introduction to this work as being the erection of the Bishop Findlay Dermach, in the year 1406.

The stillness of midnight reigned in and around that diminutive cathedral city. As Hew Borthwick, the outcast of nature, loitered on the old and narrow bridge which spans the Allan, and lingered under the gloom of some enormous alder or boor-trees that grew out of the rocks and threw their shadow on the path, some strange ideas began to hover in his mind.

Save the rush of the river over its rocky bed, the rustle of the autumn leaves in the coppice, or the bay of a sheep-dog on the distant muirlands, there was no sound in the air; but there came many an imaginary one to the ears of Borthwick. At one time he thought a wild cry went past him on the wind; at another, he was certain that voices were lamenting among the copsewood by the river side.

He listened breathlessly!

All was still, save the beating of his own heart.

Was conscience beginning to be stirred at last within that arid, cruel, and stony breast, or were these ideas the mere result of the dark and midnight hour, the place, the time, and the solemn and awful superstitions incident to the age and the nation?

Swinging high aloft in the beautiful square tower of carved stonework, the cathedral bell tolled the hour of twelve. The first sonorous note, as it rolled away upon the trembling air, made Borthwick's coward heart leap within him; and he listened to each stroke in breathless agony, as a wretch might listen to his death-knell, and when the last and twelfth had boomed away upon the darkened sky, he breathed more freely, but the perspiration hung in drops upon his clammy brow, for that bell had roused old memories in his heart, and called back the days that were gone, as an old familiar voice or gong might do.

"Tush!" he muttered; "let me not be now white-hearted and a fool, when the last die has been cast in this infernal game--the last scene prepared in this tremendous drama. Twelve has struck, but there is no appearance of them yet!"

Faint and flickering lights shot over the tall and many-coloured windows of the cathedral, and played between the slender tracery of their shafted mullions, or died away in the recesses of the church. Those were the tapers of monks who had received a penance of midnight prayers to say at certain tombs or shrines; and our lurker remembered the time when he too--but he turned on his heel, and strove to forget those better days and that embittering memory. "Would the tryst had been anywhere but here."

Rays of light were streaming more brightly from the smaller but strongly grated windows of the bishop's palace, and they played on the brown foliage of the woods below, and on the rushing surface of the river in the dell. One by one these rays of light faded away; at last darkness reigned in the mansion, and Borthwick shuddered, for he knew that Margaret Drummond and her sisters would then be a-bed.

He was deadly pale; and had any one passed him casually on that high and narrow bridge, his aspect, even at night, must assuredly have startled them.

To him it was strange and almost irritating, that all the life he had passed, with many of its minuter and long-forgotten incidents, should now rise before him like a long unfolding scroll, strongly, darkly, and fearfully, as it might do before one who is about to die; and a terrible tissue it was!

He recalled the awful name and fate of his parents, and the promises he had made to the humane old priest who had saved him doubly, as he was wont to say, "like a brand from the burning," and the vows he had made in youth, in that cathedral aisle, to spend a life of holiness, of usefulness, of purity, and of prayer, to atone for the real or traditional atrocities of Ewain Gavelrigg and his wife among the Sidlaw hills; and how had he kept these vows?

"Accursed be these thoughts!" said he, as he walked to and fro, and bit his nether lip, as if to control the growing fear and bitterness of his heart. At that moment something struck his face, and he sprang aside in terror uncontrollable.

"Pshaw!" said he, "a bat!"

Everything was fraught with some old memory to him now, and he remembered the old story of its origin to which he had often listened, as the monks sat round the refectory fire in the cold winter nights, when the Allan was sheeted with ice, and the blast of the snow-clad Grampians moaned in the leafless woods of Dunblane; and the voice of his old patron came back to his ears in the accents of awe with which he used to tell the story:--of how, when a boy of seven years of age, the Saviour of mankind was at play in the streets of Jerusalem, with other little Jews, and in sport they fashioned various birds and animals of clay, and then the children quarrelled among themselves, each preferring his own workmanship, and all united in laughing to scorn an uncouth bird made by the little hands of the golden-haired boy, the son of Mary, till the tears fell from his eyes; and as they dropped upon the little image, lo! it expanded its wings of clay and flew from hand to hand, and after fluttering over his head, soared into the air and became a veritable _bat_. On beholding this, the children fled, and on relating the story to their parents, were by them forbidden to play again with that bright-haired little boy, whom they stigmatized as an embryo sorcerer; and Borthwick remembered with mingled pity and envy the good faith, the awe, and holy interest with which the old and silver-bearded priests bent their heads around the winter hearth, and listened to legends such as this; for it was indeed an age "when old simplicity was in its prime."

At last his reveries were interrupted by perceiving at the other end of the bridge two men on foot; they had been there for some time conversing and regarding him, but unobserved by Borthwick, whose eyes and mind were turned inward, if we may say so; and now by their height, bearing, and stealthy motions, he was convinced that they were no other than Sir James Shaw of Sauchie and Sir Patrick Gray of Kyneff.

"Well met, fair sir," said the latter, with his usual courtly sneer.

"Good-morrow, Master Borthwick," added Shaw, whose incessant intoxication was quite visible, even in the dark.

Both were well armed in cuirasses, gorgets, and plate sleeves, with swords and daggers in their belts, and they bore on their heads French salades which completely concealed their faces, forming at the same time a defence which no sword could cleave or pole-axe break.

"You have good tidings, I opine, sir," said Gray.

"Alas! what leads you to infer so?"

"Your keeping tryst so faithfully," said he, again.

"Is this troublesome dame disposed of?" asked his companion, with a hiccup.

"To-morrow will tell--"

"To-morrow, and why to-morrow?" demanded Shaw, angrily.

"God's death, fellow! have we ridden a matter of seventy miles, from the Mauchline Tower to the Brig of Dunblane, only to hear this?"

"Hear me, sirs, and be patient," said Borthwick, who, to their astonishment, seemed to be as crushed in spirit as he was pale in face and trembling in speech; "I have essayed a hundred modes of obtaining access to the Bishop's palace, that I might reach Dame Margaret's room, which is in the north-east corner thereof, for I know every nook and cranny of that house of old, as if it were my own."

"And with what intent?"

"To poison the holy water font, which I understand hangs at the head of her bed."

"A rare idea," hiccupped Shaw, "provided King Henry's powder be strong enough."

"'Sdeath, the young king likely dips his dainty fingers too therein, so that would only mar King Henry's matrimony for ever--well."

"The king's pages and attendants, archers, esquires, and priests, thronged every avenue, so all attempts to reach the room were vain. By the way of the bishop's kitchen, I had less hope; for though I might dose a dish strongly enough to poison a score, yet how could I be assured that Dame Margaret would eat of it?"

"True; then by the Holy Father, we have come but to hear of difficulties."

"And to learn that nothing has been done," grumbled Sir James Shaw; "a pestilent humbug!"

"Patience, sirs, patience," groaned Borthwick; "failing about the palace, I resolved to try what could be achieved by the way of the cathedral."

"Hah!" said Gray, starting.

"I know its avenues well--"

"Ay, you were a monk, and snuffled Latin there for many a year--well."

"I begin to breathe again--so--" muttered Shaw.

"I had heard with certainty that the three sisters were to receive the Blessed Sacrament there to-morrow from the hands of the bishop, with all solemnity--"

"Well, well, what then?" asked Gray, impatiently.

"Yes, what then?" repeated the Laird of Sauchie, whose eyes were always closing.

"I stole the vestments of the sacrist who hath charge of the altar vessels, flowers, and ornaments, and whose duty it is to provide candles, bread, and wine for the communion. Well I knew where old Father Duncan's cassock hung when the good man was a-bed; and I knew the pocket too wherein he kept the key of the iron-doored niche containing the cruets of wine, beside the great altar. I donned the gown, I found the key--with eyes half blind, with ears that tingled, and a heart that trembled at every fancied sound, I glided through the long aisle of yonder silent church, and sought the niche, unchanged as when I saw it last, some sixteen years ago! I opened it--softly--slowly--fearfully, and the cruets of wine were before me--to-night, sirs--only to-night--yea only an hour ago were they before me, in my hands--and--and--"

"My God! thou didst not poison the wine--the wine about to become--"

"Hush, oh hush, in pity now; I poisoned one of them at least."

"Horror!" exclaimed Gray of Kyneff; "I foresaw not this. I would have cared little about the poisoning of some vulgar wine-pot, suppose that all Dunblane had died o' the dose; but the Communion--the Holy Eucharist--"

"_I poisoned it!_" groaned Borthwick, while his teeth chattered; "and to-morrow will solve a grand and awful mystery."

"And gain me an earldom," said Shaw.

Gray placed a hand upon his mouth.

There was a pause during which the three wretches gazed upon each other in silence; for it would require a Catholic, and more especially a Scottish Catholic of that age, to feel the full effect of the chilling awe and dread the act of this apostate priest produced upon himself and his two companions. Even _their_ hearts quailed and trembled at it; for though the infamous and unjust conduct of the popes to Scotland, in early times and during the Crusades, made the people value lightly the bulls of the Vatican--so lightly, indeed, that more than one papal legate, natheless his purple cope and scarlet stockings, has been assaulted, stripped, and driven across the English frontier, with the nation in arms, and the country flaming at his heels; still the influence of religious sentiment, whatever its phase, was, as it has ever been, strong in the hearts of the Scots; but now with Shaw and Gray it was mingled with an overpowering superstition, and veneration for ancient, incomprehensible, and mysterious rites.

"A holy horror curdled all their blood;" and thus for some minutes none of them spoke.

"This sacrilege is awful!" said Sir Patrick.

"But the Holy Eucharist will _not_ poison," said Shaw, whom the communication had completely sobered; "so thou hast, perhaps, but fooled thyself as well as us, Master Borthwick."

"What is this, Laird of Sauchie," asked Borthwick with gloomy fury; "art thou so dull as to think so? was there not William Comyn, the Lord High Chancellor of Scotland, in the days of King Malcolm IV.--a consecrated bishop too--who was poisoned by the wine of the Eucharist, and fell stone dead, in rochet, cope, and stole, on the steps of the altar?"

Another long pause ensued, during which Gray whispered to Shaw,--

"We must now close this fellow's mouth for ever; a dagger stroke, and over the bridge with him. Be ready when I say, 'Let us part, Sir Hew."

"May the blessing, or invocation, render this poison, if not altogether null in effect, at least less fatal than death?"

On this important point, Borthwick dared not reply, and they could hear his teeth chattering.

"Where is there a leech?" asked the ex-governor of Stirling.

"There is none nearer than Perth,--at least none that I wot of."

"How, Ninian the barber-chirurgeon in the Speygate?"

"The same; and he is too far off to be available," said Borthwick.

"He is the only one on the south side of Tay, except the Highland seers and crones," said Shaw, loosening his dagger in its sheath of velvet.

"Ah," continued Gray, conversing in the assumed tone of ease, to throw their intended victim off his guard; "did he not nearly slay the Lord Angus by piercing him too deep with his phlebotemus?"

"Missing the vein and cutting the artery,--a very fool."

"For which, if he had failed to stop it, the Master of Angus would have hung him over his own stair-head. He knoweth the signs and stars," continued this cold-blooded ruffian, looking casually, as it were, over the bridge to measure the height by his cold and stern eye; "but who save asses employ him, Master Borthwick?"

"Oh, many," continued Shaw, laughing, as they drew nearer their victim; "husbands, to have doses for scolding wives, and expectant heirs whose purses are empty, for old and doting uncles; in short, anyone who wishes to be rid of anyone else; for he enjoys pretty much the reputation of your friend the apothecary at--how name you the place--oh yes, Bucklersbury, in London, ha! ha! is it not so, Master Borthwick?"

He made no reply, for their ghastly merriment chilled him.

"Such a leech will not do for the daughters of the Lord Drummond," resumed Shaw; "but the night wears apace."

"_Let us part then, Sir Hew!_" said Gray, and at the same moment both their daggers clashed together in the breast of Borthwick, whose hot blood spirted horribly through his pyne doublet, over the hilts, and over their fingers.

The first blows failed to kill him, and he sank heavily against the parapet of the bridge.

"Mercy," he sighed; "mercy--God--mercy!"

"Such mercy as thou gavest King James," replied the villains as an apology to themselves, while they buried their poniards again and again in his heart, with a heavy and awful sound.

"'Tis but an act of self-defence, this!" said Gray.

"True--true--of course it is--he might have destroyed us, else," added Shaw, in a breathless voice.

"He is gone now--so over with him!" replied the other.

Lifting the heavy, and yet warm body of the regicide, they shot it over the steep bridge into the rapid stream below, where it fell with a loud splash. As it was swept down the current, they sprang upon their horses, which were haltered under the boortrees.

"Now, Sir James, away for Kyneff or Caterline!" cried Gray, as they dashed through the dark streets of Dunblane, and at full speed took the road towards that great and fertile plain which lies between the northern bank of the Tay and the base of the Sidlaw hills, and is known so well in song as the Carse of Gowrie.