The Abbot, Walter Scott [best novels to read for beginners txt] 📗

“Alas! her memory is at Holyrood, though her body is at Lochleven.—Forgive, madam,” continued the Lady, “if I call your attention to me—I am Margaret Erskine, of the house of Mar, by marriage Lady Douglas of Lochleven.”

“Oh, our gentle hostess,” answered the Queen, “who hath such care of our lodgings and of our diet—We cumber you too much and too long, good Lady of Lochleven; but we now trust your task of hospitality is well-nigh ended.”

“Her words go like a knife through my heart,” said the Lady of Lochleven—“With a breaking heart, I pray your Grace to tell me what is your ailment, that aid may be had, if there be yet time.”

“Nay, my ailment,” replied the Queen, “is nothing worth telling, or worth a leech's notice—my limbs feel heavy—my heart feels cold—a prisoner's limbs and heart are rarely otherwise—fresh air, methinks, and freedom, would soon revive me; but as the Estates have ordered it, death alone can break my prison-doors.”

“Were it possible, madam,” said the Lady, “that your liberty could restore your perfect health, I would myself encounter the resentment of the Regent—of my son, Sir William—of my whole friends, rather than you should meet your fate in this castle.”

“Alas! madam,” said the Lady Fleming, who conceived the time propitious to show that her own address had been held too lightly of; “it is but trying what good freedom may work upon us; for myself, I think a free walk on the greensward would do me much good at heart.”

The Lady of Lochleven rose from the bedside, and darted a penetrating look at the elder valetudinary. “Are you so evil-disposed, Lady Fleming?”

“Evil-disposed indeed, madam,” replied the court dame, “and more especially since breakfast.”

“Help! help!” exclaimed Catherine, anxious to break off a conversation which boded her schemes no good; “help! I say, help! the Queen is about to pass away. Aid her, Lady Lochleven, if you be a woman!”

The Lady hastened to support the Queen's head, who, turning her eyes towards her with an air of great languor, exclaimed, “Thanks, my dearest Lady of Lochleven—notwithstanding some passages of late, I have never misconstrued or misdoubted your affection to our house. It was proved, as I have heard, before I was born.”

The Lady Lochleven sprung from the floor, on which she had again knelt, and, having paced the apartment in great disorder, flung open the lattice, as if to get air.

“Now, Our Lady forgive me!” said Catherine to herself. “How deep must the love of sarcasm, be implanted in the breasts of us women, since the Queen, with all her sense, will risk ruin rather than rein in her wit!” She then adventured, stooping over the Queen's person, to press her arm with her hand, saying, at the same time, “For God's sake, madam, restrain yourself!”

“Thou art too forward, maiden,” said the Queen; but immediately added, in a low whisper, “Forgive me, Catherine; but when I felt the hag's murderous hands busy about my head and neck, I felt such disgust and hatred, that I must have said something, or died. But I will be schooled to better behaviour—only see that thou let her not touch me.”

“Now, God be praised!” said the Lady Lochleven, withdrawing her head from the window, “the boat comes as fast as sail and oar can send wood through water. It brings the leech and a female—certainly, from the appearance, the very person I was in quest of. Were she but well out of this castle, with our honour safe, I would that she were on the top of the wildest mountain in Norway; or I would I had been there myself, ere I had undertaken this trust.”

While she thus expressed herself, standing apart at one window, Roland Graeme, from the other, watched the boat bursting through the waters of the lake, which glided from its side in ripple and in foam. He, too, became sensible, that at the stern was seated the medical Chamberlain, clad in his black velvet cloak; and that his own relative, Magdalen Graeme, in her assumed character of Mother Nieneven, stood in the bow, her hands clasped together, and pointed towards the castle, and her attitude, even at that distance, expressing enthusiastic eagerness to arrive at the landing-place. They arrived there accordingly, and while the supposed witch was detained in a room beneath, the physician was ushered to the Queen's apartment, which he entered with all due professional solemnity. Catherine had, in the meanwhile, fallen back from the Queen's bed, and taken an opportunity to whisper to Roland, “Methinks, from the information of the threadbare velvet cloak and the solemn beard, there would be little trouble in haltering yonder ass. But thy grandmother, Roland—thy grandmother's zeal will ruin us, if she get not a hint to dissemble.”

Roland, without reply, glided towards the door of the apartment, crossed the parlour, and safely entered the antechamber; but when he attempted to pass farther, the word “Back! Back!” echoed from one to the other, by two men armed with carabines, convinced him that the Lady of Lochleven's suspicions had not, even in the midst of her alarms, been so far lulled to sleep as to omit the precaution of stationing sentinels on her prisoners. He was compelled, therefore, to return to the parlour, or audience-chamber, in which he found the Lady of the castle in conference with her learned leech.

“A truce with your cant phrase and your solemn foppery, Lundin,” in such terms she accosted the man of art, “and let me know instantly, if thou canst tell, whether this lady hath swallowed aught that is less than wholesome?”

“Nay, but, good lady—honoured patroness—to whom I am alike bonds-man in my medical and official capacity, deal reasonably with me. If this, mine illustrious patient, will not answer a question, saving with sighs and moans—if that other honourable lady will do nought but yawn in my face when I inquire after the diagnostics—and if that other young damsel, who I profess is a comely maiden—”

“Talk not to me of comeliness or of damsels,” said the Lady of Lochleven, “I say, are they evil-disposed?—In one word, man, have they taken poison, ay or no?”

“Poisons, madam,” said the learned leech, “are of various sorts. There is your animal poison, as the lepus marinus, as mentioned by Dioscorides and Galen—there are mineral and semi-mineral poisons, as those compounded of sublimate regulus of antimony, vitriol, and the arsenical salts—there are your poisons from herbs and vegetables, as the aqua cymbalariae, opium, aconitum, cantharides, and the like—there are also—”

“Now, out upon thee for a learned fool! and I myself am no better for expecting an oracle from such a log,” said the Lady.

“Nay, but if your ladyship will have patience—if I knew what food they have partaken of, or could see but the remnants of what they have last eaten—for as to the external and internal symptoms, I can discover nought like; for, as Galen saith in his second book de Antidotis—”

“Away, fool!” said the Lady; “send me that hag hither; she shall avouch what it was that she hath given to the wretch Dryfesdale, or the pilniewinks and thumbikins shall wrench it out of her finger joints!”

“Art