Читать книгу The Devil's Mistress - J W Brodie Innes - Страница 8

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IN looking over my great-great-great-grandfather's papers, and other records of the time, I find frequent references to a strange sickness that attacked many persons, with no ostensible cause, somewhat of the kind that we should now term an epidemic. Mr. Patrick's father, the worthy Robert Innes, who was a distinguished chirurgeon of Aberdeen, gave it a learned name, compounded of equal parts of Greek and Latin, but he had to confess his inability to cure it. The common people called it 'the wasting sickness'.

True to the traditions of his cloth, Mr. Patrick ascribed it to the direct malice of the Devil, allowed to vex the elect on account of the decay of faith and the disloyalty of the people of Scotland to the purity and doctrines of the Reformed Kirk; and it seems that the Catholic priest of Dufftown, who with his tiny congregation had by some curious inadvertence been entirely forgotten and passed over by the godly reformers, and continued to say his Mass continually without molestation, while agreeing with Mr. Patrick as to the agency of the Devil, ascribed his power to hurt to the spread of the doctrines of that very Reformed Kirk. Whereas, said Sir Robert Gordon, the Devil may have laughed in his sleeve at them both.

But whatever may have been the cause, there is no doubt that the sickness was greatly dreaded among the common folk, and indeed among the gentry also, for it spared no class, and was nearly always fatal.

Isabel Goudie, looking back towards the old castle, which now seemed to her almost like a holy place, where a new life had dawned for her, a life of joy and of power, of love and gladness, where a lover had come to her such as surely mortal woman had never known before, saw some boys running towards the castle, the foremost of them being the eldest son of the laird of Park. She heard their shouts and their talk, and her hatred of the family blazed strong in her brain.

'To-morrow I'll climb that old wall,' cried young Hay.

'Ye daur na,' said one of his companions.

'Ay, but I daur, and I'll fling down some of the stones, and scare the bats and the owls, I warrant ye!'

Isabel felt a bitter resentment, much as a papist might feel hearing a sacrilegious proposal to desecrate the altar. That place had been consecrated by that wonderful meeting with the Dark Master. It was intolerable that riotous boys should destroy the beautiful associations and trample on her romance. Above all, such a boy as that.

'May he never have male issue to come after him!'

She recalled the wish so often uttered. Her brain was boiling with indignation. As she could love, so she could hate, with an intensity and concentration that carried her away in a resistless tide.

'Oh, may the wasting sickness seize him,' she muttered, and instantly she was calm, the paroxysm of anger had passed.

Gilbert at her side knew nothing of it, but continued to speak slowly and heavily of the sermon, of the folk who had been at the kirk, and, regretfully, of the small amount in the plate.

She scarcely heeded, her mind was going back over all the incidents of her meeting with the Dark Master in the ruined castle. It was not ruined though; it was a splendid hall, not even the Earl of Moray in his fine castle of Darnaway had such a hall; and how she and the Master had lain there in each other's arms on a couch of Oriental magnificence. This was her destiny, her rightful position. Only she grieved that she had lost consciousness; she had floated away in a delicious dream, but she had missed some moments, some hours mayhap, of that wonderful time, every moment of which was precious to her.

He had praised her green gown, he had admired the way her hair lay on it, and he had stroked her hair with that thrilling touch of his.

Stay! What of that gown? How in the world had Gilbert not asked about it? How could he tolerate her going abroad in such finery, as he so often condemned, and would never permit her to wear?

She looked down in apprehension, which turned to amazed wonder, for she had on the old homespun gown, and laying her hand on her bosom she could feel the little gold crucifix sewn therein.

Had she then dreamed all that meeting in the Wards of Inshoch? No, ten thousand times! If that were a dream, then perish all earthly things. There was nothing in all the world worth living for. Sooner than give over that one experience, as an actual palpable reality, she would give herself and her soul's salvation. Yea! let everything else be a lie, but let that one thing be true.

That afternoon, as is usual with most God-fearing members of the Kirk, on the Sabbath, John Gilbert spread himself on the settle by the kitchen fire and slept audibly. Isabel walked out to the edge of the dreary loch, and looked across the still waters to the firth and the distant shores of Cromarty and Sutherland, lying very clear and defined in softest tones of grey and blue and pearl under the declining sun. But it was no longer dreary to her; on the contrary, it was irradiated with a magic light. Romance had come to her at last, and the fulfilment of her dreams.

For one fleeting moment the memory of marriage vows recurred to her, only to be instantly dismissed. The Church wherein she was brought up would acknowledge none such; in the eyes of the priest at Dufftown her marriage was no marriage at all. What mattered it what the Kirk might say? She had renounced her baptism therein, she was no longer a member of that Kirk. But with her baptism in the Catholic Church the Dark Master himself said he had nothing to do.

Then had John Gilbert ever been a husband to her? She was but his chattel bought and sold. Nay, she would not be a chattel; she refused to be bought. She belonged to herself. No human being can be bought thus in free Scotland; belonging to herself, she gave herself willingly, gladly, to a lover worthy of her.

All of which, it must be admitted, was a very specious argument, though untenable. But her heart went with it, and her heart was a most powerful advocate, whose success she desired.

All the same, mysteries surrounded her. What was real and what was dream or fancy? She could not disentangle the events. She had seemed to be perfectly solidly in the kirk at Aulderne, and there had been an actual material storm, yet she had come home without a speck of mud or wet. She had not the slightest doubt that she was bodily in the old castle at Inshoch, when she met the Dark Master that very morning in a green gown (which, by the way, she had not known she possessed) and a black hood; yet she had come home in the old homespun dress without the smallest chance of changing. If some things were dream others were real, and there was no distinguishing which was which.

Yet the very uncertainty seemed to add to the fascination of the position. If it was a puzzle it was a delightful one. She and her lover would solve it together. Her lover! Dare she call him so, even to her inmost heart. It was a wild, delicious thrill to use that term, at any rate. She would not forgo that. Her lover! her lover! She repeated the words with a glad reiteration of pride.

Awhile she wandered along the banks of the loch, then she turned and went in.

Strange dreams came to her that night.

She was by the kirk of Aulderne, just within the kirkyard wall; some women were in the kirkyard. At least she thought they were women by their dress, but they were very dimly seen, and who they were she could not determine. Vague, shadowy figures they were.

At one corner of the kirkyard the brown earth was heaped over a newly made grave; round this the spectral figures gathered. She seemed to remember that an unchristened child had been buried there. The figures began to dig the newly turned earth. She watched, horrified but fascinated. She knew in her dream that they would disinter the child's body. Something of this she had read.

Presently one of the spectres, leaping down into the grave, lifted out the little coffin, and the others, gathering round, seemed to prise off the coffin lid.

As usually chances in a dream, all sense of right and wrong, all sense of horror or disgust, seemed to have left her. The most unnatural and abominable things seemed unaccountably natural and of course. She tried to see, but the crowding phantoms prevented her. Yet by a strange instinct in her dream she knew what they were doing. They were cutting the heart out of the little body and then replacing it in the coffin, which was lowered again into the grave and covered up. Meantime the heart was placed in an earthenware vessel, and the evil congregation separated hither and thither, some seemingly collecting various grasses and herbs, others bringing earth from different places. She could now see more clearly how two foul and evil-looking women bent over the vessel that held the heart of the child; one of them clipping locks of her own grizzled and matted hair, which she snipped up into little pieces, while the other pared her nails and scattered the parings into the vessel. The others now returned with the things they had collected and threw them all into the pot, and two commenced to pound the contents with heavy sticks, the whole company chanting a kind of dirge that sounded more like the baying of dogs than anything human.

Then a rush of darkness swept over everything, a suffocating cloud in which she gasped for breath. The nightmare oppression passed and she did not wake. Now she was near to the Wards of Inshoch. A gate gave access to the castle ruins, and on this sat a raven. An evil-looking old woman, dirty and dishevelled, whose eyes blazed like flames, hobbled up to it, carrying the same earthenware vessel she had seen before. Twice, thrice she essayed to pass the gate, but it seemed as though she were driven back by some strong force. Muttering curses she thrust her hand in the vessel, and smeared some of its contents on the gate.

'Woe unto him who first touches this gate, she said; then she chanted:

'With hurt and hate

I charm this gate

He shall not sleep or soon or late.'

Then the howling dirge began again. But this time it was the howling of a dog strayed on the moor.

Isabel woke, still hearing the dog. She remembered Margaret Brodie's account of the rhyming spells. Then she thought of the castle of Inshoch. What could that villainous old woman have to do with that place of delicious memories? Then she remembered that the old woman could not enter. So, then, the place was guarded. Her lover was as careful as she herself would be to preserve it from contamination. But the gate was fatal: who would enter there first? she wondered sleepily. Then recollection came. Young Hay of Park. He was to be slain. She had willed it, but she had not willed these loathsome hags. What could such as they have to do with her, or with the Dark Master? She thought of the scene in the kirkyard she had dreamed of--horrible, repulsive beyond measure. Still curiosity stung her. It was but a dream, but she did wish she could have seen more. It was not real, so there was no harm in wishing to see more. It was but like reading a book of horrors that gives one a not unpleasant thrill, and one rather resents the mitigation of its gruesomeness.

So she fell asleep. But she dreamed no more that night.

The tale must shift here to the mansion-house of Park, a pleasant, sunny house built in the old Scottish style, with white harled walls and corby steps, a round tower set in one corner, and the front door looking as though it were jammed in at the angle made by the tower and the wall. Stately old trees stood round it. A bright room on the first floor looked out through the small panes of its two windows to the blue waters of the firth and the hills beyond.

A gentle-faced woman with a weary, sad expression gazed out of the window, and walked restlessly up and down, then returned to look out again.

'Will the leech not come?' she said.

The laird of Lochloy and Park fidgeted in his deep armchair; his face was flushed, his coat unbuttoned, waistcoat and trunks loose and ungirt, and his ruffed shirt had a wine stain on it and marks of spilled snuff.

'Why all this steer?' he muttered impatiently, and somewhat thickly.

'I tell ye, David, the bairn is sick, he is very sick; and I would to the Lord the leech would hasten, for I know not what ails him.'

'Well, well! Woman's fancies! 'Tis but some trifling childish ill. The bairn was well enough this morn when he went forth.'

'Ay, I know that fine. He went to play in the Wards of Inshoch, with his school-mates. But no sooner had he touched the gate that leads into the old castle (he had run on before them all as he is ever wont to do) than he fell in a faint; and they carried him away till they met a cart returning this way, and they put him therein, and so they brought him home; and now he is hot, burning with fever, yet with a cold sweat over him, and ever he moans and cries of some terrible thing he sees.'

'Oh, David! I tell ye it was a wicked thing ye did when ye counselled the Earl of Moray to put out the folk from that cottage of his. They say the old woman is a gipsy and a witch, and I fear she hath overlooked our bairn.'

'Nay, an' she be a witch I'll see to it that she be worried at the stake. But I think 'tis all nonsense, a silly superstition, and ye know they are a constant annoyance to my Lord Brodie, for the old woman declares she was his father's mistress, boasts of it, and says that he deserted her. The Earl will not put them out, though indeed I urged him so to do for his own peace of mind. But he cares not. An' the old woman be a witch, she shall be burned. But I believe not in such nonsense myself.'

'Sure it is wiser to let them alone, David. Leave the Kirk and the Courts to manage what is their business. If these people be truly of the power they say, let us not bring their curses on us. Heaven knows we have trouble enough of our own. And if they be innocent and deluded, or a mark for the spite of others, it were a cruel thing to burn or torture them, and would surely bring God's curse on the shedders of innocent blood.'

'Ay! woman's reason! I tell ye, mistress, ye know naught of these matters. Leave them to men. Go ye and attend to your household. There lies your business. Look you, there comes your leech. He will assure ye. The bairn has but a stomach-ache from over many green apples. Get ye to your own department, and leave me to mine.'

He rose heavily and a trifle unsteadily, shook off the snuff from his shirt front and laced his trunks and waistcoat, and walked out, calling for his man to order round his sorrel nag.

Mistress Hay of Park and Lochloy hurried to meet the leech and take him to the sick boy's chamber, whence presently they emerged, grave but somewhat reassured.

'At present, madam, I can tell ye but little. I am thankful that this is not, so far as I can tell just now, what we know as "the wasting sickness," and is more like to some poison in the blood from some unknown cause. Now that I have let blood freely, I will send you some conserve of lilies with snake-root and other ingredients, and I trust that soon there may be a good recovery. I shall call again shortly. Madam, I have the honour to wish you good day.'

Half way down the avenue he met Mr. Harry Forbes.

'I hear the young laird hath been smitten of a sore sickness,' said the latter. 'I go now to try, by my prayers, to counter the wiles and malice of Satan, for in truth he has been very busy among us of late.'

'Ye may pray as ye like, minister,' said the doctor, who was something of an unbeliever, 'and the young laird will get well, yet in truth it is my blood-letting that's to thank. That and my conserve of lilies, whereof I alone have the secret, and which is a specific. And it was fortunate the good lady of Park sent for me when she did. In two hours it might have been too late.'

'Ay! use ye your skill, Sir Leech. We have warrant in Holy Writ for the employment of a physician, but beware lest ye blaspheme. These sicknesses, I tell ye, come from the Devil, and it is through his servants who practise the abominable and wicked crime of witchcraft or sorcerie, against the divine law of Almighty God, that he is able thus to vex the elect. The which practices, by the laws of God, and also by divers Acts of the Parliament of this realm, are declared worthy of death. And well ye know that within the bounds of the Forest of Darnaway there dwells a notorious witch, at one time joined in sin unto the father of the Lord Brodie, a godly man; but for this sin she hath never repented, nor been put to penance in the kirk. But because the laird of Park hath urged the Earl to remove her, which notwithstanding he has not done, she hath been heard to threaten him with her evil sorcerie. Now, there ye have the cause of this sickness. But indeed I trust the power of the Holy Kirk of the Reformed faith may be able to defeat the malice of the Devil.'

The doctor fidgeted with much impatience during this harangue.

'Ay! pray as ye list, minister. But I'd have ye to know that this is but a certain humour of the blood, engendered betwixt the hot and dry natures, during the waning of the moon, and in the opposition of Mars unto Mercury, and hath little to do with such superstition and vain device as ye speak of. And ye know well that witchcraft cannot be accomplished but by characters, signs, crosses, poisoned waters, ashes, oils, figures, pictures, herbs, roots, or other matters, whereof there is no appearance here. Therefore ye are greatly superstitious. But by natural means, and the employment of science, shall this sickness be banished; and so fare ye well.'

Mr. Patrick Innes, being himself a godly minister of the Word, and also the son as hath been said of a distinguished chirurgeon, records the disputes that frequently fell out betwixt these two worthy men, and hath a certain sympathy with them both. Yet well he knew that Mr. Harry Forbes was right in ascribing these troubles to the agency of the Devil, whereof indeed there was a certain proof thereafter, as shall be more particularly shown.

And this tale of the sickness of the laird's son spread quickly through the district, so that news of it was brought before noon to the farm of Lochloy, and told to Mistress Isabel Goudie by one of the farm wenches. The memory of her dream of the past night came back on her vividly. Could it then be that her wish had borne fruit thus suddenly? But this was no action of hers. Nor, as she thought, had it aught to do with the Dark Master. She must seek Margaret Brodie and get some certainty of these things.

She wished greatly that she knew how she might communicate with the Dark Master himself. If he were truly her lover, as she hoped and believed, and if he were to give her the power he had promised, he would not leave the vengeance she desired to be accomplished by other means, nor would he entrust it to the hands of such an evil hag as she had seen at the gate, who could not even enter into that enclosure so full of sweet memories secret between herself and him.

'Nay, lassie!' said Margaret as they sat together beside her fire, 'this is just one of my mother's cantrips. Ill faur the auld deevil! She would bring destruction on us all, but for the Master's aid. Often I've warned her to have naught to do with her cursed gipsy sorcerie. Ye shall learn in good time how to put "the wasting sickness" on any, and all of our coven will aid ye therein. Ye shall draw down the moon from heaven, and the paste that ye shall make shall be of power to do what ye will. Therewith can ye rule all men in the power of the Dark Master. But my mother, with her foul gipsy spells, hath but little power; she cannot give death, however she may boast, but only a sickness, and the bairn will recover this time. Yet if ye desire to destroy the male offspring of the laird of Park, I say ye have good cause to do so, and it will be easy for ye. So haud ye a still tongue. We are on the Moray's land here, and the Earl will not put us off, for good reason. Moreover, there is right good wine within the cellars of Darnaway, the which we will taste ere many days be past, and a prime venison pasty withal.'

'But, tell me, Margaret! How may I meet with him? If indeed I be, as ye say, a favourite with him, he will not leave me without some means of calling to him when I am in need.'

'Nay, dearie! Fear ye not that. But I may not tell ye. He will teach ye himself the words of power. He is good to us, and well I wot that ye are now the queen of the coven.'

She rose from the settle where she sat, and, crossing over, laid a hand on Isabel's head, grasping both her hands in the other hand. A delicious languor seemed to steal over her.

'Listen!' said Margaret.

Far away through the woods there came the sound of steady footsteps.

'The Dark Master is walking through the woods,' she said again. 'He communes with the trees and the streams. Listen now again.'

There was a rushing sound in the air, the leaves and branches rattled and pattered.

''Tis the spirits that do his bidding. The spirits that serve us at our covens. Oh, lassie! 'tis the rare sport we have! Ye know not what it is to live yet. But ye shall, ye shall! Hey, then! The hunt is up! The hunt is up! Hark to them!'

It sounded like the tramp of galloping horses overhead; wild cries seemed blended with the hoof-strokes. Isabel strained her ears. She heard over and over again the cry of 'Horse and hattock! Horse and hattock!'

Her pulses throbbed madly. Oh, to be out with them! the wild chase, the mad exhilaration! This were something to live for.

'Horse and hattock! Horse and hattock!'

She fancied herself on horseback, remembering the days when as a young girl she was a daring rider. But now on a great black steed rushing through the air, with the Dark Master beside her. The deer fled before them. A great stag was close before the plunging horses. Her breath came fast, her eyes shone with a wild light. The spirit of the chase was on her, she longed for the kill. The stag fell before the spear of the Dark Master, but the knife to gralloch him was in her hand.

Then Margaret let her hand drop, and in an instant all vanished.

'Ye see, dearie! he's not far off.'

Isabel opened her eyes with a sigh.

'Eh, Margaret! What a time! Sure there's life somewhere; I deemed it was all grey and dreary.'

'Nay, my lassie! not when ye have learned to know him. But think ye no more of yon dream of yours. 'Twas but one of my mother's cantrips, and anyway he asks ye not to join in anything ye like not. For me, I mind not a corpse here and there. It interests me to see more of them than ever I saw before, to see how they're made; and there's queer power about them too. But I ken there's some that likes them not, and there's some that's afeared of them. And he asks of none what they like not.'

New ideas were thronging on Isabel as she walked home. The memories of love in the old castle on the Wards of Inshoch were a very precious secret shrine in her mind; but now there was also the dream of the wild mad gallop, the hunting of the stag, the rush of glorious excitement. Was that ever to be realised? Life was beginning to open out into marvellous vistas.

Even the scene of her dream in the kirkyard of Aulderne had almost ceased to be horrible; almost she wished she had seen more. She felt like a schoolboy who, gloating over a story of ghastly horrors, resents the omission of any detail.

She slept that night calm and dreamless, yet with a thrill of anticipation that the wonders of life were only just beginning.