A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P R S T U V W X Z

The Abbot

S >> Sir Walter Scott >> The Abbot




"If they may in aught avail your Grace," said Roland Graeme, bowing
profoundly.

"Alas!" said the Queen, "what needs this, Catherine?--why prepare new
victims to be involved in, and overwhelmed by, my cruel fortune?--were
we not better cease to struggle, and ourselves sink in the tide
without farther resistance, than thus drag into destruction with us
every generous heart which makes an effort in our favour?--I have had
but too much of plot and intrigue around me, since I was stretched an
orphan child in my very cradle, while contending nobles strove which
should rule in the name of the unconscious innocent. Surely time it
were that all this busy and most dangerous coil should end. Let me
call my prison a convent, and my seclusion a voluntary sequestration
of myself from the world and its ways."

"Speak not thus, madam, before your faithful servants," said
Catherine, "to discourage their zeal at once, and to break their
hearts. Daughter of Kings, be not in this hour so unkingly--Come,
Roland, and let us, the youngest of her followers, show ourselves
worthy of her cause--let us kneel before her footstool, and implore
her to be her own magnanimous self." And leading Roland Graeme to the
Queen's seat, they both kneeled down before her. Mary raised herself
in her chair, and sat erect, while, extending one hand to be kissed by
the page, she arranged with the other the clustering locks which
shaded the bold yet lovely brow of the high-spirited Catherine.

"Alas! _ma mignóne_," she said, for so in fondness she often
called her young attendant, "that you should thus desperately mix with
my unhappy fate the fortune of your young lives!--Are they not a
lovely couple, my Fleming? and is it not heart-rending to think that I
must be their ruin?"

"Not so," said Roland Graeme, "it is we, gracious Sovereign, who will
be your deliverers."

"_Ex oribus parvulorum!_" said the Queen, looking upward; "if it
is by the mouth of these children that Heaven calls me to resume the
stately thoughts which become my birth and my rights, thou wilt grant
them thy protection, and to me the power of rewarding their
zeal!"--Then turning to Fleming, she instantly added,--"Thou knowest,
my friend, whether to make those who have served me happy, was not
ever Mary's favourite pastime. When I have been rebuked by the stern
preachers of the Calvinistic heresy--when I have seen the fierce
countenances of my nobles averted from me, has it not been because I
mixed in the harmless pleasures of the young and gay, and rather for
the sake of their happiness than my own, have mingled in the masque,
the song, or the dance, with the youth of my household? Well, I repent
not of it--though Knox termed it sin, and Morton degradation--I was
happy, because I saw happiness around me; and woe betide the wretched
jealousy that can extract guilt out of the overflowings of an
unguarded gaiety!--Fleming, if we are restored to our throne, shall we
not have one blithesome day at a blithesome bridal, of which we must
now name neither the bride nor the bridegroom? but that bridegroom
shall have the barony of Blairgowrie, a fair gift even for a Queen to
give, and that bride's chaplet shall be twined with the fairest pearls
that ever were found in the depths of Lochlomond; and thou thyself,
Mary Fleming, the best dresser of tires that ever busked the tresses
of a Queen, and who would scorn to touch those of any woman of lower
rank,--thou thyself shalt, for my love, twine them into the bride's
tresses.--Look, my Fleming, suppose them such clustered locks as those
of our Catherine, they would not put shame upon thy skill."

So saying, she passed her hand fondly over the head of her youthful
favourite, while her more aged attendant replied despondently, "Alas!
madam, your thoughts stray far from home."

"They do, my Fleming," said the Queen; "but is it well or kind in you
to call them back?--God knows, they have kept the perch this night but
too closely--Come, I will recall the gay vision, were it but to punish
them. Yes, at that blithesome bridal, Mary herself shall forget the
weight of sorrows, and the toil of state, and herself once more lead a
measure.--At whose wedding was it that we last danced, my Fleming? I
think care has troubled my memory--yet something of it I should
remember--canst thou not aid me?--I know thou canst."

"Alas! madam," replied the lady----

"What!" said Mary, "wilt thou not help us so far? this is a peevish
adherence to thine own graver opinion, which holds our talk as folly.
But thou art court-bred, and wilt well understand me when I say, the
Queen _commands_ Lady Fleming to tell her where she led the last
_branle_."

With a face deadly pale, and a mien as if she were about to sink into
the earth, the court-bred dame, no longer daring to refuse obedience,
faltered out--"Gracious Lady--if my memory err not--it was at a masque
in Holyrood--at the marriage of Sebastian."

The unhappy Queen, who had hitherto listened with a melancholy smile,
provoked by the reluctance with which the Lady Fleming brought out her
story, at this ill-fated word interrupted her with a shriek so wild
and loud that the vaulted apartment rang, and both Roland and
Catherine sprang to their feet in the utmost terror and alarm.
Meantime, Mary seemed, by the train of horrible ideas thus suddenly
excited, surprised not only beyond self-command, but for the moment
beyond the verge of reason.

"Traitress!" she said to the Lady Fleming, "thou wouldst slay thy
sovereign--Call my French guards--_a moi! a moi! mes Français!_--
I am beset with traitors in mine own palace--they have murdered my
husband--Rescue! rescue for the Queen of Scotland!" She started up
from her chair--her features, late so exquisitely lovely in their
paleness, now inflamed with the fury of frenzy, and resembling those
of a Bellona. "We will take the field ourself," she said; "warn the
city--warn Lothian and Fife--saddle our Spanish barb, and bid French
Paris see our petronel be charged!--Better to die at the head of our
brave Scotsmen, like our grandfather at Flodden, than of a broken
heart, like our ill-starred father!"

"Be patient--be composed, dearest Sovereign," said Catherine: and then
addressing Lady Fleming angrily, she added, "How could you say aught
that reminded her of her husband?"

The word reached the ear of the unhappy Princess, who caught it up,
speaking with great rapidity. "Husband!--what husband?--Not his most
Christian Majesty--he is ill at ease--he cannot mount on
horseback.--Not him of the Lennox--but it was the Duke of Orkney thou
wouldst say."

"For God's love, madam, be patient!" said the Lady Fleming.

But the Queen's excited imagination could by no entreaty be diverted
from its course. "Bid him come hither to our aid," she said, "and
bring with him his lambs, as he calls them--Bowton, Hay of Talla,
Black Ormiston, and his kinsman Hob--Fie! how swart they are, and how
they smell of sulphur! What! closeted with Morton? Nay, if the Douglas
and the Hepburn hatch the complot together, the bird, when it breaks
the shell, will scare Scotland. Will it not, my Fleming?"

"She grows wilder and wilder," said Fleming; "we have too many
hearers for these strange words."

"Roland," said Catherine, "in the name of God, begone! You cannot
aid us here--Leave us to deal with her alone--Away--away!"

She thrust him to the door of the anteroom; yet even when he had
entered that apartment, and shut the door, he could still hear the
Queen talk in a loud and determined tone, as if giving forth orders,
until at length the voice died away in a feeble and continued
lamentation.

At this crisis Catherine entered the anteroom. "Be not too anxious,"
she said, "the crisis is now over; but keep the door fast--let no one
enter until she is more composed."

"In the name of God, what does this mean?" said the page; "or what
was there in the Lady Fleming's words to excite so wild a transport?"

"Oh, the Lady Fleming, the Lady Fleming," said Catherine, repeating
the words impatiently; "the Lady Fleming is a fool--she loves her
mistress, yet knows so little how to express her love, that were the
Queen to ask her for very poison, she would deem it a point of duty
not to resist her commands. I could have torn her starched head-tire
from her formal head--The Queen should have as soon had the heart out
of my body, as the word Sebastian out of my lips--That that piece of
weaved tapestry should be a woman, and yet not have wit enough to tell
a lie!"

"And what was this story of Sebastian?" said the page. "By Heaven,
Catherine, you are all riddles alike!"

"You are as great a fool as Fleming," returned the impatient maiden;
"know ye not, that on the night of Henry Darnley's murder, and at the
blowing up of the Kirk of Field, the Queen's absence was owing to her
attending on a masque at Holyrood, given by her to grace the marriage
of this same Sebastian, who, himself a favoured servant, married one
of her female attendants, who was near to her person?"

"By Saint Giles," said the page, "I wonder not at her passion, but
only marvel by what forgetfulness it was that she could urge the Lady
Fleming with such a question."

"I cannot account for it," said Catherine; "but it seems as if great
and violent grief and horror sometimes obscure the memory, and spread
a cloud like that of an exploding cannon, over the circumstances with
which they are accompanied. But I may not stay here, where I came not
to moralize with your wisdom, but simply to cool my resentment against
that unwise Lady Fleming, which I think hath now somewhat abated, so
that I shall endure her presence without any desire to damage either
her curch or vasquine. Meanwhile, keep fast that door--I would not
for my life that any of these heretics saw her in the unhappy state,
which, brought on her as it has been by the success of their own
diabolical plottings, they would not stick to call, in their snuffling
cant, the judgment of Providence."

She left the apartment just as the latch of the outward door was
raised from without. But the bolt which Roland had drawn on the
inside, resisted the efforts of the person desirous to enter. "Who is
there?" said Graeme aloud.

"It is I," replied the harsh and yet slow voice of the steward
Dryfesdale.

"You cannot enter now," returned the youth.

"And wherefore?" demanded Dryfesdale, "seeing I come but to do my
duty, and inquire what mean the shrieks from the apartment of the
Moabitish woman. Wherefore, I say, since such is mine errand, can I
not enter?"

"Simply," replied the youth, "because the bolt is drawn, and I have no
fancy to undo it. I have the right side of the door to-day, as you had
last night."

"Thou art ill-advised, thou malapert boy," replied the steward, "to
speak to me in such fashion; but I shall inform my Lady of thine
insolence."

"The insolence," said the page, "is meant for thee only, in fair
guerdon of thy discourtesy to me. For thy Lady's information, I have
answer more courteous--you may say that the Queen is ill at ease, and
desires to be disturbed neither by visits nor messages."

"I conjure you, in the name of God," said the old man, with more
solemnity in his tone than he had hitherto used, "to let me know if
her malady really gains power on her!"

"She will have no aid at your hand, or at your Lady's--wherefore,
begone, and trouble us no more--we neither want, nor will accept of,
aid at your hands."

With this positive reply, the steward, grumbling and dissatisfied,
returned down stairs.




Chapter the Thirty-Second.


It is the curse of kings to be attended
By slaves, who take their humours for a warrant
To break into the bloody house of life,
And on the winking of authority
To understand a law.
KING JOHN.

The Lady of Lochleven sat alone in her chamber, endeavouring with
sincere but imperfect zeal, to fix her eyes and her attention on the
black-lettered Bible which lay before her, bound in velvet and
embroidery, and adorned with massive silver clasps and knosps. But she
found her utmost efforts unable to withdraw her mind from the
resentful recollection of what had last night passed betwixt her and
the Queen, in which the latter had with such bitter taunt reminded her
of her early and long-repented transgression.

"Why," she said, "should I resent so deeply that another reproaches me
with that which I have never ceased to make matter of blushing to
myself? and yet, why should this woman, who reaps--at least, has
reaped--the fruits of my folly, and has jostled my son aside from the
throne, why should she, in the face of all my domestics, and of her
own, dare to upbraid me with my shame? Is she not in my power? Does
she not fear me? Ha! wily tempter, I will wrestle with thee strongly,
and with better suggestions than my own evil heart can supply!"

She again took up the sacred volume, and was endeavouring to fix her
attention on its contents, when she was disturbed by a tap at the door
of the room. It opened at her command, and the steward Dryfesdale
entered, and stood before her with a gloomy and perturbed expression
on his brow.

"What has chanced, Dryfesdale, that thou lookest thus?" said his
mistress--"Have there been evil tidings of my son, or of my
grandchildren?"

"No, Lady," replied Dryfesdale, "but you were deeply insulted last
night, and I fear me thou art as deeply avenged this morning--Where is
the chaplain?"

"What mean you by hints so dark, and a question so sudden? The
chaplain, as you well know, is absent at Perth upon an assembly of
the brethren."

"I care not," answered the steward; "he is but a priest of Baal."

"Dryfesdale," said the Lady, sternly, "what meanest thou? I have ever
heard, that in the Low Countries thou didst herd with the Anabaptist
preachers, those boars which tear up the vintage--But the ministry
which suits me and my house must content my retainers."

"I would I had good ghostly counsel, though," replied the steward, not
attending to his mistress's rebuke, and seeming to speak to himself.
"This woman of Moab----"

"Speak of her with reverence," said the Lady; "she is a king's
daughter."

"Be it so," replied Dryfesdale; "she goes where there is little
difference betwixt her and a beggar's child--Mary of Scotland is
dying."

"Dying, and in my castle!" said the Lady, starting up in alarm; "of
what disease, or by what accident?"

"Bear patience, Lady. The ministry was mine."

"Thine, villain and traitor!--how didst thou dare----"

"I heard you insulted, Lady--I heard you demand vengeance--I promised
you should have it, and I now bring tidings of it."

"Dryfesdale, I trust thou ravest?" said the Lady.

"I rave not," replied the steward. "That which was written of me a
million of years ere I saw the light, must be executed by me. She hath
that in her veins that, I fear me, will soon stop the springs of
life." "Cruel villain," exclaimed the Lady, "thou hast not poisoned
her?" "And if I had," said Dryfesdale, "what does it so greatly merit?
Men. bane vermin--why not rid them of their enemies so? in Italy they
will do it for a cruizuedor."

"Cowardly ruffian, begone from my sight!"

"Think better of my zeal, Lady," said the steward, "and judge not
without looking around you. Lindesay, Ruthven, and your kinsman
Morton, poniarded Rizzio, and yet you now see no blood on their
embroidery--the Lord Semple stabbed the Lord of Sanquhar--does his
bonnet sit a jot more awry on his brow? What noble lives in Scotland
who has not had a share, for policy or revenge, in some such
dealing?--and who imputes it to them? Be not cheated with names--a
dagger or a draught work to the same end, and are little unlike--a
glass phial imprisons the one, and a leathern sheath the other--one
deals with the brain, the other sluices the blood--Yet, I say not I
gave aught to this lady."

"What dost thou mean by thus dallying with me?" said the Lady; "as
thou wouldst save thy neck from the rope it merits, tell me the whole
truth of this story-thou hast long been known a dangerous man."

"Ay, in my master's service I can be cold and sharp as my sword. Be it
known to you, that when last on shore, I consulted with a woman of
skill and power, called Nicneven, of whom the country has rung for
some brief time past. Fools asked her for charms to make them beloved,
misers for means to increase their store; some demanded to know the
future--an idle wish, since it cannot be altered; others would have an
explanation of the past--idler still, since it cannot be recalled. I
heard their queries with scorn, and demanded the means of avenging
myself of a deadly enemy, for I grow old, and may trust no longer to
Bilboa blade. She gave me a packet--`Mix that,' said she, `with any
liquid, and thy vengeance is complete.'"

"Villain! and you mixed it with the food of this imprisoned Lady, to
the dishonour of thy master's house?"

"To redeem the insulted honour of my master's house, I mixed the
contents of the packet with the jar of succory-water: They seldom fail
to drain it, and the woman loves it over all."

"It was a work of hell," said the Lady Lochleven, "both the asking and
the granting.--Away, wretched man, let us see if aid be yet too late!"

"They will not admit us, madam, save we enter by force--I have been.
twice at the door, but can obtain no entrance."

"We will beat it level with the ground, if needful--And, hold--summon
Randal hither instantly.--Randal, here is a foul and evil chance
befallen--send off a boat instantly to Kinross, the Chamberlain Luke
Lundin is said to have skill--Fetch off, too, that foul witch
Nicneven; she shall first counteract her own spell, and then be burned
to ashes in the island of Saint Serf. Away, away--Tell them to hoist
sail and ply oar, as ever they would have good of the Douglas's hand!"

"Mother Nicneven will not be lightly found, or fetched hither on these
conditions," answered Dryfesdale.

"Then grant her full assurance of safety--Look to it, for thine own
life must answer for this lady's recovery."

"I might have guessed that," said Dryfesdale, sullenly; "but it is my
comfort I have avenged mine own cause, as well as yours. She hath
scoffed and scripped at me, and encouraged her saucy minion of a page
to ridicule my stiff gait and slow speech. I felt it borne in upon me
that I was to be avenged on them."

"Go to the western turret," said the Lady, "and remain there in ward
until we see how this gear will terminate. I know thy resolved
disposition--thou wilt not attempt escape."

"Not were the walls of the turret of egg-shells, and the lake sheeted
ice," said Dryfesdale. "I am well taught, and strong in belief, that
man does nought of himself; he is but the foam on the billow, which
rises, bubbles, and bursts, not by its own effort, but by the mightier
impulse of fate which urges him. Yet, Lady, if I may advise, amid this
zeal for the life of the Jezebel of Scotland, forget not what is due
to thine own honour, and keep the matter secret as you may."

So saying, the gloomy fatalist turned from her, and stalked off with
sullen composure to the place of confinement allotted to him.

His lady caught at his last hint, and only expressed her fear that the
prisoner had partaken of some unwholesome food, and was dangerously
ill. The castle was soon alarmed and in confusion. Randal was
dispatched to the shore to fetch off Lundin, with such remedies as
could counteract poison; and with farther instructions to bring mother
Nicneven, if she could be found, with full power to pledge the Lady of
Lochleven's word for her safety.

Meanwhile the Lady of Lochleven herself held parley at the door of the
Queen's apartment, and in vain urged the page to undo it.

"Foolish boy!" she said, "thine own life and thy Lady's are at stake--
Open, I say, or we will cause the door to be broken down."

"I may not open the door without my royal mistress's orders," answered
Roland; "she has been very ill, and now she slumbers--if you wake her
by using violence, let the consequence be on you and your followers."

"Was ever woman in a strait so fearful!" exclaimed the Lady of
Lochleven--"At least, thou rash boy, beware that no one tastes the
food, but especially the jar of succory-water."

She then hastened to the turret, where Dryfesdale had composedly
resigned himself to imprisonment. She found him reading, and demanded
of him, "Was thy fell potion of speedy operation?"

"Slow," answered the steward. "The hag asked me which I chose--I told
her I loved a slow and sure revenge. 'Revenge,' said I, 'is the
highest-flavoured draught which man tastes upon earth, and he should
sip it by little and little--not drain it up greedily at once."

"Against whom, unhappy man, couldst thou nourish so fell a revenge?"

"I had many objects, but the chief was that insolent page."

"The boy!--thou inhuman man!" exclaimed the lady; "what could he
do to deserve thy malice?"

"He rose in your favour, and you graced him with your commissions--
that was one thing. He rose in that of George Douglas's also--that was
another. He was the favourite of the Calvinistic Henderson, who hated
me because my spirit disowns a separated priesthood. The Moabitish
Queen held him dear--winds from each opposing point blew in his
favour--the old servitor of your house was held lightly among
ye--above all, from the first time I saw his face, I longed to destroy
him."

"What fiend have I nurtured in my house!" replied the Lady. "May
God forgive me the sin of having given thee food and raiment!"

"You might not choose, Lady," answered the steward. "Long ere this
castle was builded--ay, long ere the islet which sustains it reared
its head above the blue water, I was destined to be your faithful
slave, and you to be my ungrateful mistress. Remember you not when I
plunged amid the victorious French, in the time of this lady's mother,
and brought off your husband, when those who had hung at the same
breasts with him dared not attempt the rescue?--Remember how I plunged
into the lake when your grandson's skiff was overtaken by the tempest,
boarded, and steered her safe to the land. Lady--the servant of a
Scottish baron is he who regards not his own life, or that of any
other, save his master. And, for the death of the woman, I had tried
the potion on her sooner, had not Master George been her taster. Her
death--would it not be the happiest news that Scotland ever heard? Is
she not of the bloody Guisian stock, whose sword was so often red with
the blood of God's saints? Is she not the daughter of the wretched
tyrant James, whom Heaven cast down from his kingdom, and his pride,
even as the king of Babylon was smitten?"

"Peace, villain !" said the Lady--a thousand varied recollections
thronging on her mind at the mention of her royal lover's name;
"Peace, and disturb not the ashes of the dead--of the royal, of the
unhappy dead. Read thy Bible; and may God grant thee to avail thyself
better of its contents than thou hast yet done!" She departed hastily,
and as she reached the next apartment, the tears rose in her eyes so
hastily, that she was compelled to stop and use her kerchief to dry
them. "I expected not this," she said, "no more than to have drawn
water from the dry flint, or sap from a withered tree. I saw with a
dry eye the apostacy and shame of George Douglas, the hope of my son's
house--the child of my love; and yet I now weep for him who has so
long lain in his grave--for him to whom I owe it that his daughter can
make a scoffing and a jest of my name! But she is _his_
daughter--my heart, hardened against her for so many causes, relents
when a glance of her eye places her father unexpectedly before me--and
as often her likeness to that true daughter of the house of Guise, her
detested mother, has again confirmed my resolution. But she must
not--must not die in my house, and by so foul a practice. Thank God,
the operation of the potion is slow, and may be counteracted. I will
to her apartment once more. But oh! that hardened villain, whose
fidelity we held in such esteem, and had such high proof of! What
miracle can unite so much wickedness and so much truth in one bosom!"

The Lady of Lochleven was not aware how far minds of a certain gloomy
and determined cast by nature, may be warped by a keen sense of petty
injuries and insults, combining with the love of gain, and sense of
self-interest, and amalgamated with the crude, wild, and indigested
fanatical opinions which this man had gathered among the crazy
sectaries of Germany; or how far the doctrines of fatalism, which he
had embraced so decidedly, sear the human conscience, by representing
our actions as the result of inevitable necessity.

During her visit to the prisoner, Roland had communicated to Catherine
the tenor of the conversation he had had with her at the door of the
apartment. The quick intelligence of that lively maiden instantly
comprehended the outline of what was believed to have happened, but
her prejudices hurried her beyond the truth.

"They meant to have poisoned us," she exclaimed in horror, "and there
stands the fatal liquor which should have done the deed!--Ay, as soon
as Douglas ceased to be our taster, our food was likely to be fatally
seasoned. Thou, Roland, who shouldst have made the essay, wert
readily doomed to die with us. Oh, dearest Lady Fleming, pardon,
pardon, for the injuries I said to you in my anger--your words were
prompted by Heaven to save our lives, and especially that of the
injured Queen. But what have we now to do? that old crocodile of the
lake will be presently back to shed her hypocritical tears over our
dying agonies.--Lady Fleming, what shall we do?"

Copyright (c) 2007. famouswriterz.com. All rights reserved.