as the colour grows richer in stained windows; and the glow of hot autumn afternoons on hillside vineyards, was ready to be set free and to disperse the fogs of London.
Roderick Watson
THE WIND howled chilly and with a mournful cadence through the funnel-like closes, up the winding high street and round the castle rock, raising wavelets on the dull Nor’ Loch and shaking from the creaking trees such withered leaves as autumn had not taken long before. The filmy clouds that drifted across the crescent moon, now hid her in their dark embrace, now let a glimmering beam fall with a ghastly pallor on the quaint old town. It was freezing pretty hard; and all the streets were slippery; and the more sheltered corners of the Loch had curdled into watery ice, in spite of the gale. There was good promise of snow, before the dawn.
Therefore it was with little satisfaction that Master Ephraim Martext, outed Minister of the Gospel, drew his door shut after him, and strode down the close. There, he was sheltered; but, next moment, as he entered the Grassmarket, the wind nearly bowled him off his feet, by twitching his cloaking round his sturdy shanks. Master Ephraim drew his refractory garment tighter round his frame, and leant against the blast. At the same moment the moon cleared a cloud, only indeed to pass beneath another; but there was time for one pale and uncertain beam to fall upon that scaffold, which had been stained the day before with the blood of five of the Pentland insurgents.
Master Ephraim’s brow darkened. ‘An evil night,’ he muttered: ‘Oh Lord! how long wilt thou delay the day of thy vengeance!’
A few minutes ‘walk, and he entered the indicated wynd, and stopped at the door. Drawing for the key which had been enclosed in the letter, he inserted it into the lock. With a groan the bolt fell back: with a shriek, the door revolved upon its hinges. Carefully the divine closed it after him; and, then, he turned to examine the scene. A wide lobby, and a princely staircase lay exposed to his eyes, the one paved with large flags, the other bordered with carved oak balustrades, and both begrimed with dirt, draped with cobwebs, and carpetted (sic.) with dust. For a small space round the door, the air and the entry of persons had cleared away the dust; but Martext could see the prints of ascending feet, faithfully preserved in the covering of the stairs. The whole scene was exhibitted (sic.) by the yellow radiance of an oil preserved from strong draughts in a stable lantern, and set upon the first landing. A chill smote on the minister’s heart. The wind was rough, and the frost nipped his face and hands shrewdly; but he wished himself out again.’ Poor lad!’ he thought. ‘It would be a shame to leave him. Who have a better right to my assistance and ministration than those who have fought for my church. Nevertheless this is an eerie place, and the air is wondrous unwholesome.’
Then, he gathered courage and hurried up four flights of steps, to where an open door let a beam of flickering red light fall out upon the topmost landing. He entered. The room was long, low, uncarpetted (sic), unfurnished. At one end there lay a heap of discoloured, bemired, and blood-stained cloaks, with a brace of pistols, a drawn sabre, and a Bible with a black bullet hole right through the middle of it. Close by, a great wood fire smouldered with a dull red glow, and leapt occasionally into flickering tongues of flame, in a fire-place lined with blue Dutch picture tiles; and even as the flames leapt up, Moses would strike the rock with his uplifted rod, and the fire would curl round the Hebrew boys and their divine companion in the furnace heated seven times, and the imps that circled St Anthony would toss their deformed arms about and wax and wane changing from squat little Pucks, to colossal Apollyons; and then the flames sank back; and the pictures became stiff tiles again. In front of the fire stood a tall thin sallow man, of some seven and twenty years of age. His face was worn and haggard; his brow was tied up in a bloodstained napkin; and his eye gleamed with a cold, fierce, feverish light. His clothes were torn, disordered, and muddy. Very strange did he look beside the solid, sensible face and black and seemly garments of the worthy divine.
I shall pass over the first greetings which were like most other first greetings. When he was standing before the fire warming his frost-pained fingers. Master Ephraim began: ‘Well, Master Ravenswood, and what made you summon me hither? It is a bitter night and a tempestuous: besides it is no great recommendation to the Council to be found with a bluidy rebel and sacrilegious murderer – for so they call you, Master Ravenswood.’
‘Do you grudge coming?’ inquired Ravenswood, in a surly tone. ‘There is yet time to go.’
‘Nay, nay, you mistake me,’ returned Martext, warmly. ‘It would not be seemly for an uncle to desert a nephew, nor a minister, one of the defenders of his faith: I only meant to hurry you; for my absence must not be noticed.’
‘I have more need of you than you think, perhaps. Sometimes, I think I shall go mad, sitting up here alone in the old empty house. Last night man Corsack sat opposite me for an hour with his living eyes glaring strangely from his dead face; and he spoke – he said – Bah! Mister Martext, I wish you to pray with me.’
It was an age of superstition: Martext was interested in what he heard. ‘What did he say – what did he say, Ravenswood?’ he asked, in a hoarse whisper.
‘It is strange,’ said the other. ‘To tell you what he said, I got poor Donald to take the letter to you; and now, when you are here, I dare not speak. I will constrain myself. Listen: you know well enough that my family were among the first to be stricken down by the plague of 1661. My sister, Janet, went into the secret closet on the stair. How she found the spring, Heaven only knows; for when we found her lying, plague stricken, upon the steps without she was only able to say that she had entered the cellar. That night she died. My father determined to penetrate the mystery. With his own hand, he burst the panel in and entered; and, two hours after, an old servant found him lying with the plague mark on him, on the landing at the top of a narrow flight of stairs. Both of them died that evening. Everyone, too, who passed the fatal door, were stricken like those who entered. In alarm, my mother sent for workmen to board the entrance up. The carpenters met the same fate as all the others.’
‘I have heard all this before, my young friend,’ said Master Ephraim, observing that the narrator paused; ‘nor is it altogether without parallel. The Lord had permitted, in his wisdom, that there should be several of these noctious (sic.) receptacles of Death. In part of this city, there are more than one, whereof the neighbours live in wholesome dread. But what is all this, Master Ravenswood, to the words of Nielson’s ghost?’
‘He said words which I may not mention; but he told me to essay the entrance of the Plague Cellar.’
‘God forbid!’
‘I have had other augery,’ returned Ravenswood, in sepulchral tones, his eyes gleaming with a still wilder fire; ‘and besides, it is in a glorious cause. He told me, sir, as plainly as a living man could speak that he who entered the Plague Cellar should save our Church from it’s (sic.) present wretched state.’
Any unbiased spectator could have seen that the words of Ravenswood took their birth from fever. The baleful fire in his eyes, the shaking of his emaciated hands, the volubility and wildness of his words all tended to prove the same fact. But in matters of superstition, men gave up their prerogative of common sense in the year 1667. Besides, who is so deaf as he that will not hear. Master Martext wished to believe in the possible renovation of his oppressed Church, and the physical impossibility of the matter did not stick much in his throat.
‘A glorious aim, as you say, kinsman,’ he replied – ‘a glorious aim. What is the other augery?’
‘It is more certain still. You see here my Bible pierced by the bullet of an erastian dragoon. After the vision, I opened it to seek for some divine command. Spared by a miracle from the course of the ball, I found the command: Seek and ye shall find!’
For a long time, the preacher sat brooding over the strange revelations of his companion. At last, he raised his head. ‘And will you dare?’ he asked.
‘Dare!’ was the only answer: but it was made in a tone so firm and so enthusiastic, that all doubt was stilled