The Fair Maid of Perth Part 30

"Bring forward," he said, "our key, yonder it lies, and apply it to this rebellious gate."

The key he pointed at was a large beam of wood, left on one side of the street, with the usual neglect of order characteristic of a Scottish borough of the period.

The shouting men of Ind instantly raised it in their arms, and, supporting it by their united strength, ran against the door with such force, that hasp, hinge, and staple jingled, and gave fair promise of yielding. Eviot did not choose to wait the extremity of this battery: he came forth into the court, and after some momentary questions for form's sake, caused the porter to undo the gate, as if he had for the first time recognised the midnight visitors.

"False slave of an unfaithful master," said the Prince, "where is our disloyal subject, Sir John Ramorny, who has proved recreant to our summons?"

"My lord," said Eviot, bowing at once to the real and to the a.s.sumed dignity of the leader, "my master is just now very much indisposed: he has taken an opiate--and--your Highness must excuse me if I do my duty to him in saying, he cannot be spoken with without danger of his life."

"Tush! tell me not of danger, Master Teviot--Cheviot--Eviot--what is it they call thee? But show me thy master's chamber, or rather undo me the door of his lodging, and I will make a good guess at it myself. Bear high the calabash, my brave followers, and see that you spill not a drop of the liquor, which Dan Bacchus has sent for the cure of all diseases of the body and cares of the mind. Advance it, I say, and let us see the holy rind which incloses such precious liquor."

The Prince made his way into the house accordingly, and, acquainted with its interior, ran upstairs, followed by Eviot, in vain imploring silence, and, with the rest of the rabble rout, burst into the room of the wounded master of the lodging.

He who has experienced the sensation of being compelled to sleep in spite of racking bodily pains by the administration of a strong opiate, and of having been again startled by noise and violence out of the unnatural state of insensibility in which he had been plunged by the potency of the medicine, may be able to imagine the confused and alarmed state of Sir John Ramorny's mind, and the agony of his body, which acted and reacted upon each other. If we add to these feelings the consciousness of a criminal command, sent forth and in the act of being executed, it may give us some idea of an awakening to which, in the mind of the party, eternal sleep would be a far preferable doom. The groan which he uttered as the first symptom of returning sensation had something in it so terrific, that even the revellers were awed into momentary silence; and as, from the half rec.u.mbent posture in which he had gone to sleep, he looked around the room, filled with fantastic shapes, rendered still more so by his disturbed intellects, he muttered to himself:

"It is thus, then, after all, and the legend is true! These are fiends, and I am condemned for ever! The fire is not external, but I feel it--I feel it at my heart--burning as if the seven times heated furnace were doing its work within!"

While he cast ghastly looks around him, and struggled to recover some share of recollection, Eviot approached the Prince, and, falling on his knees, implored him to allow the apartment to be cleared.

"It may," he said, "cost my master his life."

"Never fear, Cheviot," replied the Duke of Rothsay; "were he at the gates of death, here is what should make the fiends relinquish their prey. Advance the calabash, my masters."

"It is death for him to taste it in his present state," said Eviot: "if he drinks wine he dies."

"Some one must drink it for him--he shall be cured vicariously; and may our great Dan Bacchus deign to Sir John Ramorny the comfort, the elevation of heart, the lubrication of lungs, and lightness of fancy, which are his choicest gifts, while the faithful follower, who quaffs in his stead, shall have the qualms, the sickness, the racking of the nerves, the dimness of the eyes, and the throbbing of the brain, with which our great master qualifies gifts which would else make us too like the G.o.ds. What say you, Eviot? will you be the faithful follower that will quaff in your lord's behalf, and as his representative? Do this, and we will hold ourselves contented to depart, for, methinks, our subject doth look something ghastly."

"I would do anything in my slight power," said Eviot, "to save my master from a draught which may be his death, and your Grace from the sense that you had occasioned it. But here is one who will perform the feat of goodwill, and thank your Highness to boot."

"Whom have we here?" said the Prince, "a butcher, and I think fresh from his office. Do butchers ply their craft on Fastern's Eve? Foh, how he smells of blood!"

This was spoken of Bonthron, who, partly surprised at the tumult in the house, where he had expected to find all dark and silent, and partly stupid through the wine which the wretch had drunk in great quant.i.ties, stood in the threshold of the door, staring at the scene before him, with his buff coat splashed with blood, and a b.l.o.o.d.y axe in his hand, exhibiting a ghastly and disgusting spectacle to the revellers, who felt, though they could not tell why, fear as well as dislike at his presence.

As they approached the calabash to this ungainly and truculent looking savage, and as he extended a hand soiled as it seemed with blood, to grasp it, the Prince called out:

"Downstairs with him! let not the wretch drink in our presence; find him some other vessel than our holy calabash, the emblem of our revels: a swine's trough were best, if it could be come by. Away with him! let him be drenched to purpose, in atonement for his master's sobriety. Leave me alone with Sir John Ramorny and his page; by my honour, I like not yon ruffian's looks."

The attendants of the Prince left the apartment, and Eviot alone remained.

"I fear," said the Prince, approaching the bed in different form from that which he had hitherto used--"I fear, my dear Sir John, that this visit has been unwelcome; but it is your own fault. Although you know our old wont, and were your self partic.i.p.ant of our schemes for the evening, you have not come near us since St. Valentine's; it is now Fastern's Even, and the desertion is flat disobedience and treason to our kingdom of mirth and the statutes of the calabash."

Ramorny raised his head, and fixed a wavering eye upon the Prince; then signed to Eviot to give him something to drink. A large cup of ptisan was presented by the page, which the sick man swallowed with eager and trembling haste. He then repeatedly used the stimulating essence left for the purpose by the leech, and seemed to collect his scattered senses.

"Let me feel your pulse, dear Ramorny," said the Prince; "I know something of that craft. How! Do your offer me the left hand, Sir John?

that is neither according to the rules of medicine nor of courtesy."

"The right has already done its last act in your Highness's service,"

muttered the patient in a low and broken tone.

"How mean you by that?" said the Prince. "I am aware thy follower, Black Quentin, lost a hand; but he can steal with the other as much as will bring him to the gallows, so his fate cannot be much altered."

"It is not that fellow who has had the loss in your Grace's service: it is I, John of Ramorny."

"You!" said the Prince; "you jest with me, or the opiate still masters your reason."

"If the juice of all the poppies in Egypt were blended in one draught,"

said Ramorny, "it would lose influence over me when I look upon this."

He drew his right arm from beneath the cover of the bedclothes, and extending it towards the Prince, wrapped as it was in dressings, "Were these undone and removed," he said, "your Highness would see that a b.l.o.o.d.y stump is all that remains of a hand ever ready to unsheath the sword at your Grace's slightest bidding."

Rothsay started back in horror. "This," he said, "must be avenged!"

"It is avenged in small part," said Ramorny--"that is, I thought I saw Bonthron but now; or was it that the dream of h.e.l.l that first arose in my mind when I awakened summoned up an image so congenial? Eviot, call the miscreant--that is, if he is fit to appear."

Eviot retired, and presently returned with Bonthron, whom he had rescued from the penance, to him no unpleasing infliction, of a second calabash of wine, the brute having gorged the first without much apparent alteration in his demeanour.

"Eviot," said the Prince, "let not that beast come nigh me. My soul recoils from him in fear and disgust: there is something in his looks alien from my nature, and which I shudder at as at a loathsome snake, from which my instinct revolts."

"First hear him speak, my lord," answered Ramorny; "unless a wineskin were to talk, nothing could use fewer words. Hast thou dealt with him, Bonthron?"

The savage raised the axe which he still held in his hand, and brought it down again edgeways.

"Good. How knew you your man? the night, I am told, is dark."

"By sight and sound, garb, gait, and whistle."

"Enough, vanish! and, Eviot, let him have gold and wine to his brutish contentment. Vanish! and go thou with him."

"And whose death is achieved?" said the Prince, released from the feelings of disgust and horror under which he suffered while the a.s.sa.s.sin was in presence. "I trust this is but a jest! Else must I call it a rash and savage deed. Who has had the hard lot to be butchered by that b.l.o.o.d.y and brutal slave?"

"One little better than himself," said the patient, "a wretched artisan, to whom, however, fate gave the power of reducing Ramorny to a mutilated cripple--a curse go with his base spirit! His miserable life is but to my revenge what a drop of water would be to a furnace. I must speak briefly, for my ideas again wander: it is only the necessity of the moment which keeps them together; as a thong combines a handful of arrows. You are in danger, my lord--I speak it with certainty: you have braved Douglas, and offended your uncle, displeased your father, though that were a trifle, were it not for the rest."

"I am sorry I have displeased my father," said the Prince, entirely diverted from so insignificant a thing as the slaughter of an artisan by the more important subject touched upon, "if indeed it be so. But if I live, the strength of the Douglas shall be broken, and the craft of Albany shall little avail him!"

"Ay--if--if. My lord," said Ramorny, "with such opposites as you have, you must not rest upon if or but; you must resolve at once to slay or be slain."

"How mean you, Ramorny? Your fever makes you rave" answered the Duke of Rothsay.

"No, my lord," said Ramorny, "were my frenzy at the highest, the thoughts that pa.s.s through my mind at this moment would qualify it. It may be that regret for my own loss has made me desperate, that anxious thoughts for your Highness's safety have made me nourish bold designs; but I have all the judgment with which Heaven has gifted me, when I tell you that, if ever you would brook the Scottish crown, nay, more, if ever you would see another St. Valentine's Day, you must--"

"What is it that I must do, Ramorny?" said the Prince, with an air of dignity; "nothing unworthy of myself, I hope?"

"Nothing, certainly, unworthy or misbecoming a prince of Scotland, if the bloodstained annals of our country tell the tale truly; but that which may well shock the nerves of a prince of mimes and merry makers."

"Thou art severe, Sir John Ramorny," said the Duke of Rothsay, with an air of displeasure; "but thou hast dearly bought a right to censure us by what thou hast lost in our cause."

"My Lord of Rothsay," said the knight, "the chirurgeon who dressed this mutilated stump told me that the more I felt the pain his knife and brand inflicted, the better was my chance of recovery. I shall not, therefore, hesitate to hurt your feelings, while by doing so I may be able to bring you to a sense of what is necessary for your safety. Your Grace has been the pupil of mirthful folly too long; you must now a.s.sume manly policy, or be crushed like a b.u.t.terfly on the bosom of the flower you are sporting on."

"I think I know your cast of morals, Sir John: you are weary of merry folly--the churchmen call it vice--and long for a little serious crime.