Upon this the conspirators, still alive to their intentions, sent the Lord President of the College of Justice to make offer of an ancient mansion that was situated on rising ground to the southward of Edinburgh, exposed to the pure breeze beyond the city walls, from the woods of the burgh-muir, and the beautiful sheet of water which they bordered. The unsuspecting Mary gratefully accepted the courteous offer, and there the poor young king was conveyed to——die.
This house belonged to the Lord President's brother, Robert Balfour, Provost of "the Collegiate Kirk of the Blessed Virgin Mary in the Fields." It had long been uninhabited; and was situated, says Buchanan, in a lonesome and solitary place, between the ruins of two churches, "where no noise or outcry could be heard." It stood without the city walls, on the site now occupied by Drummond Street.
Small, ancient, and massive, it was probably coeval with its church, which had been built in 1220 by Alexander II. Its front faced the west; and from thence a view from the windows extended over fields to the hamlet of Lauriston. Its northern gable was so close to the strong wall of the city, that its principal door was but one pace distant from an arched postern which is still discernible in the former, and was then flanked by a massive tower. To the westward lay the Kirk-of-Field, a great cross church with buttressed walls and pointed windows, for so it is shown in a print of 1544. To the eastward lay the ruins of the Dominican monastery, which had been burned down in 1528. Of these the fragment of a tower still survived, with an ancient gate, bearing in Saxon characters the same legend still remaining to this day in the wall of the Kirk-of-Field Wynd, which now bears another name—
Ave Maria, gratia plena Dominus Terum,
i.e., "Hail Mary! full with grace—the Lord be with you." On the south the fields extended to the spacious common muir of the city, which was shaded by many a Druid oak; and to the eastward the ground descended suddenly into the lonely valley at the foot of Salisbury craigs. To the north lay the long line of the city ramparts, with the barrier-portes of the Kirk-of-Field and Bristo, with their round arches flanked by strong towers, where the brass culverins scowled through deep embrasures, and the heads of Rizzio's minor murderers grinned on iron spikes.
The humble dwelling in which Mary's incaution and the conspirators' cunning had lodged the young king, was a two-storied house; a small corridor, having a room on each side, led to a tower behind, wherein (after the Scottish fashion) a circular stair gave access to the upper story, which contained but two apartments, corresponding with two on the ground floor.
Darnley occupied one; the queen had the chamber below, and beneath it were those vaults of which the conspirators made a use so fatal; on the south lay a spacious garden shaded by many venerable fruit-trees, which had been reared by prebendaries of St. Mary.
It was now the month of February, 1567.
Thaws, and the increasing heat of the sun, had dispelled the snow from moor and mountain side, though a little still lingered on the peaks of the beautiful Pentlands. The atmosphere was teeming with humid vapours, and the ice that had so long bound the loch of the city, had been dissipated, and once more the snowy swan and the sable coot floated on its azure bosom. The thatch on the cottage roofs of Lauriston was once again of emerald green, and the tufted grass began to droop, where for the past winter the icicle had hung.
Each morning, as he rose above Arthur's Seat, the sun shone more merrily on the barred windows of the close chamber where the sick king lay; and he heard the voices of the mavis and merle, as they sang on the dewy trees of the ancient orchard. A showery Candlemas-tide had come and gone, unmarked by ceremony or prayer; but old people congratulated each other on the prospect of a beautiful spring, as they repeated the ancient saw—