The Wolfe of Badenoch: A Historical Romance of the Fourteenth Century

by Sir Thomas Dick Lauder

The vesper hymn had died away through the lengthened aisles of the venerable Cathedral; every note of labour or of mirth was silenced within the town. The weary burghers were sunk in sleep, and even the members of the various holy fraternities had retired to their repose. No eye was awake, save those of a few individuals among the religious, who, having habits of more than ordinary severity of discipline, had doomed themselves to wear the hard pavement with their bare knees, and the hours in endless repetition of penitential prayers before the shrine of the Virgin, or the image of some favourite saint. Not even a dog was heard to stir in the streets. They were as dark, too, as they were silent; for, with the exception of a feeble lamp or two, that burned in niches, before the little figures set up here and there for Popish worship, there was nothing to interrupt the deep obscurity that prevailed.

Suddenly the sound of a large body of horsemen was heard entering the town from the west. The dreams of the burghers were broken, and they were roused from their slumbers; the casements were opened, one after another, as the band passed along, and many a curious head was thrust out. They moved on alertly, without talking; but although they uttered no sounds, and were but dimly seen, the clank of their weapons, and of their steel harness, told well enough that they were no band of vulgar, peace-loving merchants, but a troop of stirring men-at-arms; and many was the cheek that blenched, and many was the ejaculation that escaped the shuddering lips of the timid burghers, as they shrunk within their houses at the alarming conviction. They crossed and blessed themselves after the warriors had passed by, and each again sought his bed.

But the repose of the inhabitants was for that night doomed [[538]]to be short. Distant shrieks of despair, mingled with shouts of exultation, began to arise in the neighbourhood of the Cathedral and the College, in which all the houses of the canons were clustered; and soon the town was alarmed from its centre to its suburbs by the confused cries of half-naked fugitives, who hurried along into the country, as if rushing from some dreadful danger.

“Fire, fire!—murder!—fire, fire!—the Wolfe of Badenoch!”

The terrible name of the fell Earl of Buchan was enough, of itself, to have spread universal panic through the town, even in the midst of broad sunshine. But darkness now magnified their fears. Every one hastened to huddle on what garments might be at hand, and to seize what things were most valuable and portable; and all, without exception—men, women, and children—hurried out into the streets, to seek immediate safety in flight. As the crowd pressed onwards, scarcely daring to look behind them, they beheld the intense darkness of the night invaded by flames that began to shoot upwards in fitful jets. The screams and the shouts rang in their ears, and they quickened their trembling speed; their voices subdued by fear, as they went, into indistinct whispers of horror. No one dared to stop; but, urging on his own steps, he dragged after him those of his feeble parents, or tottering wife, or helpless children.

Those who were most timorous, halted not until they had hid themselves in the neighbouring woods; but those whose curiosity was in some degree an equipoise to their fears, stopped to look behind them whenever a view of the town could be obtained, that they might judge of, and lament over, the devastation that was going forward. Already they could see that the College, the Church of St. Giles, and the Hospital of the Maison Dieu, were burning; but these were all forgotten, as they beheld the dire spectacle of the Cathedral, illuminated throughout all the rich tracery of its Gothic windows by a furious fire, that was already raging high within it. Groans and lamentations burst from their hearts, and loud curses were poured out on the impious heads of those whose fury had led them to destroy so glorious a fabric, an edifice which they had been taught to venerate from their earliest infancy, and to which they were attached by every association, divine and human, that could possibly bind the heart of man. In the midst of their wailings, the pitchy vault of heaven began to be reddened by the glare of the spreading conflagration; and the loud and triumphant shouts that now arose, unmingled with those cries of terror [[539]]which had at first blended with them, too plainly told that the power of the destroyer was resistless.

As the Lady Beatrice and the Franciscan were the last comers among the crowd of pilgrims and travellers who that night filled the charitable caravansera of the Maison Dieu, they had been put to lodge in the very uppermost storey of the antique and straggling building. The lady occupied a chamber at the extremity of a long passage, running through one wing that was dedicated to the use of the few sisters who inhabited the Hospital, and their female guests. The Franciscan was thrust into a little turret room that hung from one angle of a gable at the very opposite end of the edifice, being connected with the garrets that lay over that wing occupied by the preaching brethren and the guests of their own sex. There was no direct communication between the opposite parts of the building where the lady and the friar were lodged. The main stair, that opened from the doorway of the Hospital, arose within the body of the house, and several narrow passages branched off from it, having separate stairs leading to the different parts of the higher regions.

The brethren and sisters of the institution, as well as the numerous temporary inmates of its various chambers, were alarmed by the shrieks that arose when the firebrands were at first applied to the Cathedral, and the houses of the clergy connected with it. Neither the permanent nor the accidental tenants of the house had much personal property to remove, and what they had was instantly carried out by a general rush into the courtyard, whence they hastily escaped, each prompted by a desire of self-preservation. Not so the Lady Beatrice and the Franciscan. Both of them had suffered so much from want of natural rest, and the monk especially had undergone fatigue of body so lengthened and so severe during the protracted storm they had lately had to struggle with, that they lay as unconscious of the noise as if their senses had been locked up by the influence of some powerful opiate. The Lady Beatrice, indeed, was half awakened by the din occasioned by the escape of those who were in the house. But she had been dreaming of the ship and of the sea, and the hurry of the retreating steps and the confused voice of alarm having speedily subsided within the Hospital, she turned again to enjoy a more profound repose, believing it was her fancy that had made her imagine she had heard the sound of the waves and the winds, and the bustling tread of the mariners.

Again a noise came that increased and jarred in her ears, [[540]]and a vivid light arose that flickered through the casement into the place where she lay, and falling strongly on her face, her silken eyelashes were gradually opened, and, terror seizing upon her, she sprang at once from her couch to the window. Then it was that she beheld the court of the Hospital below filled with mounted men-at-arms, together with numbers on foot, who seemed to be active agents in kindling combustibles, by the employment of which the whole main body of the building was already in flames—as she could easily guess from the suffocating smoke that arose, and the red glare that was thrown over the features of those who, with their faces turned upwards, were watching the progress of the devouring element with a fiendish expression of satisfaction.

Half-dead with fear, the Lady Beatrice began to hurry on her garments, doubtful, in the state of distraction she was thrown into, whether she might or ought to hope to escape from the fire, since she could not possibly do so without exposing herself to the fury of a savage band, whose present occupation was enough to proclaim them enemies of the most reckless description. She was bewildered, and knew not what to do. The towers and spires of the Cathedral were blazing like gigantic torches. The darkness of night seemed to be put to flight, and distant yells arising from time to time, proclaimed the multitude who were actors in this scene of ruin.